IN THE COURTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 73, 22 March 1912, Page 5

IN THE COURTS.

(Per Press Association.) Timaru, March 21. The farmers around Beacon sfield village have been accustomed for some years to hold a mixed sports ■‘meeting in a paddock on Boxing •Days, the sports including some gallops and trots for local -horses, the prizes being provided by sweepstakes. The races were not advert'sed, but it had become an understood thing that there would be horse races, and today two of the managers of the last sports were prosecuted under the Act of 1909 for holding an illegal race meeting. For the defence it was contended that this was a sports meeting, not a rece meeting, and that there was nothing more in the races ■than if the men agreed to try their horses in reaching the same point across the paddock. Mr. Day, S.M.', referred to the Little River case, and convicted the defendants, but imposed no penalty beyond costs. Dunedin, March 21. At the Magistrate’s Court to-day, Mrs. Peters, licensee of Tattersall’s Hotel, was fined £2,' with costs, on a charge of obtaining the services of a. barman without first making application to the secretary of the Hotel Employees’ Union to supply her with a worker. Henry Thomas Andrews, licensee of the Southern Hotel, was fin'ed £2, with costs, on a similar charge.