TAKING BEER FROM HOTEL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 773, 20 September 1929, Page 16

TAKING BEER FROM HOTEL

PERMISSIBLE AFTER HOURS IF BOUGHT EARLIER

IMPORTANT JUDGMENT Press Association LEVIN, Thursday. An important judgment affecting the sale and delivery of liquor was given by Mr. J. L. Stout, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court today. The case was one in which Richard Watts, secretary of a football club, and .Evan Jones, licensee of the Levin Hotel, were charged, the former with being on licensed premises after hours, and the latter with selling liquor and keeping his premises open for sale during prohibited hours. It was stated that W T atts purchased and paid for a jar of beer in the afternoon, and the barman placed the jar in a cupboard. Watts forgot to call for the beer until the evening, when he was found by a constable leaving the hotel with the jar under his arm, and on his way to a football smoke concert. The magistrate found that the Court was bound by the English decision in the case of Bristow v. Piper (1915), and that the sale was completed by the payment and appropriation of goods during legitimate hours. The informations therefore were dismissed. “It is true," said the magistrate, “that this decision opens a very wide door to evade the provisions of the Licensing Act. but that is a matter for tho Legislature, which can close the door by decreeing that a contract is incomplete until the purchaser takes actual delivery of the liquor."