SUNDAY CLOSING OF PUBLIC HOUSES.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 983, 20 August 1877, Page 3

SUNDAY CLOSING OF PUBLIC HOUSES.

The following is the judgment given by Mr Justice Williams in the case which was appealed by George Dobson, Dunedin, to the Supreme Court. The case, it should be noted, was one affected only by the Ordinances in force in Otago : It seems to me that the provisions of the 32nd section of the Ordinance of 1865, and of the section of the Ordinance of 1875 which now replaces the former section, fix the hours within which liquor may be sold, &c., on any working day, but that they also contemplate that licensed houses shall be closed at all other times beyond those hours, and therefore that they shall be closed on the Sunday. There is no doubt an ambiguity as to the construction of the two sections, as to whether the enactment as to closing in the 2nd section applies to Sundays. It must, however, have been the intention of the Legislature that houses should be closed at all hours during which liquors are prohibited from being sold, and as the words of the Ordinance are capable of this construction, I prefer to follow it. The word closed in the 2nd section has reference to the former part of the section, and means closed for the purposes there mentioned, viz., selling or supplying liquor, or suffering liquor to be drunk. In order to justify a conviction under this section, the Magistrates should be satisfied that the premises were kept open for one of these purposes. Yery slight evidence would justify them in convicting, but there should be something before them on which they could base their decision. (See Brigden v Hughes, L.E, 12 B. Div., 330 ; and Tassell v Ovenden, Weekly Notes, May 19th, 1877, page 125.) In the present case the prosecutor entered a side door which was was open, and found that liquor was being sold to persons who are admitted by the case to be bona fide travellers. No one else was seen to have been served with liquor, and there appears to have been no reason for 'supposing that any liquor had been improperly sold. It does not appear that the door had been open for any length of time. There is nothing, therefore, from which it could be inferred that the Ordinance had been infringed. If any inference against the appellant could be drawn from the mere fact of the door having been found open, that inference is rebutted by the circumstance that persons were found within who had a perfect right to enter, take what refreshment they choose, and depart at pleasure, and whom the landlord certainly was not bound to shut in while they were refreshing themselves. The answers, therefore, to the questions propounded arc: —l. The holder of a publican’s license may sell liquor on Sunday under the 33rd section of the Ordinance of 1865 to bona fide travellers and lodgers. 2, The appellant was wrongly convicted. The appellant will have his costs as againtt the respondent.