52 BREACHES OF LICENSING ACT

Southland Times, Issue 24868, 7 October 1942, Page 2

52 BREACHES OF LICENSING ACT

Company And Employee Fined ( Fifty-two charges of breaches of the Licensing Act were preferred against Maling and Co., Christchurch, and an employee, Lawrence Horace Sandford, traveller, at a sitting of the Gore Magistrate’s Court yesterday. There were 28 charges of soliciting orders for liquor in a no-licence area brought against Sandford, and nine charges of aiding and abetting Sandford in the commission of an offence and 15 charges of failing to notify intention to send liquor into a no-licence area against the defendant company. Mr R. C. Abernethy, S.M., was on the Bench. Sergeant W. J. Irwin prosecuted and the defendant company was represented by Mr J. L. Watson. Sergeant Irwin said that the defendant Sandford was a traveller employed by Maling and Co., among his lines being tea, coffee, cordials, stock lick and liquor. He had approached farmers for orders for stock lick and had then asked them if they would like to place an order for liquor. A complaint had been received and it had been found that about 100 orders had gone through the Court. Sandford had admitted the offences, stating that he had not been aware that he was committing an offence by asking clients for an order. Sandford, who pleaded guilty to all charges, said he had only asked clients if they were interested in his firm’s price list for liquor. He was not aware that he was committing an offence. Pleas of guilty to the 24 charges brought against the defendant company were entered by Mr Watson, He said that the requirements of notifying had been fulfilled with the exception of two, about which a mistake had been made. The notices, however, had been sent to the courts in the districts of clients instead of to Gore. He submitted that the charges should be treated as technical and that they should be dismissed as trivial. Referring to the charges of aiding and abetting, Mr Watson said that Sandford’s area included licensed and no-licensed districts. In most districts he was perfectly entitled to produce his liquor price lists, and if he produced them in no-licence districts that was his own affair as he had been instructed by the company to be careful about licensed and no-licensed areas. V Sandford was convicted and fined £5, costs 10/-, on the first charge, and he was convicted and ordered to pay costs 10/- on each of the other 27 charges. The defendant company was convicted and fined £7, costs 15/-, on the first charge of aiding and abetting and on each of the eight other charges it was ordered to pay costs 10/-. The charges of failing to notify were dismissed with the exception of two and costs 10/- were ordered to be paid on these two charges.