LIQUOR AFTER HOURS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5165, 15 August 1927, Page 3

LIQUOR AFTER HOURS.

ANOMALY IN LAW SUGGESTED. A PECULIAR CASE. A licensing judgment of considerable importance to publicans and others was delivered by Mr E. Page, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington la.st week, concerning the case in which Michael Burke, licensee of the City Hotel, was charged with having unlawfully allowed liquor to be* consumed on his premises, and with having sold it after hours and exposing it for sale after hours. The barman, Timothy O’Connell, was also charged on three informations with supplying liquor unlawfully after hours.

“The evidence shows,” said His Worship, “that at 6.22 p.m. on June 23 a sergeant and a constable of police entered the hotel. In the public bar they found six men, three of them being barmen who wiere employed in the hotel but who were off duty on this afternoon, and the othir three being friends of thesei barmqn. Behind the bar, in his shirt was the defendant O'Connell. The main door to the bar was locked, but a slide, which looks from the passage into the bar, was open. The bar was lighted, and the lic&nsiee was upstairs. The barman, whose friends the three men were, had returned to the hotel from his afternoon off, at about 6 p.m., and be met his three friends there by appointment. He got them to wait while he wrote up in the bar his stock book for the next morning, and he then called for a drink for the six men present, such drinks being supplied by the defendant O’Connell. Tihe barman and his three friends then went off to have tea at the house of one of them.” The Magistrate, continuing, said that the decisions relating to the right of a person living in an hotel to supply liquor during closing hours to a friend who was his bona fide guest seemed to disclose an anomaly. Section 190 of the Licensing Act provided that every person who, during closing hours, allowed liquor, although purchased before the hours of closing, to be consumed on the premises, was liable to a fine. The only statutory exception to this provision was contained in section 191, which provided that it should be lawful for, but not obligatory upon, a licensee to sell liquor at any time to any person really a lodger, living or staying on the premises. “It is, however, well established,” went on Mr Page, “that this prohibition against the consumption of liquor during closing hours does not apply to the licensee, nor to his household, nor to 'his family, nor his servants, nor does it apply to the bona fide guests of a lodger These exceptions are not contained in the Statute itself, but are there by necessary implication. It has been recently held by the Supreme Court, (however, that there is no exception in favour of bona fide guests of the wife of the licensee.” The Magistrate quoted certain cases, saying that the results of the decisions appeared to be that a person other than the could lawfully supply liquor to the guest of the licensee, or to the guest of a lodger. “This result,” he declared, “is not one at which 1 should have arrived unaided, and I am unable to find in the Statute a satisfactory basis for the distinction. The decisions quoted, however, are binding to this Court. The defendant O’Connell must therefore be convicted. With regard to the licensee, although he was not personally present whent his liquor was supplied, he is, I think, liable for the acts servant whom he left in charge of the bar. The act of supplying this liquor and allowing it to be consumed was within the general scope of the servant’s employment. Burke must therefore be convicted for having allowed the liquor to be consumed. The charges of selling and exposing liquor for sale, though, are, in my opinion, not established.”

O’Connell was fined £5 and costs on one charge, while Burke was fined £1 and costs. The other charges against O’Connell were withdrawn at the suggestion of the magistrate.