SUMMARY JUSTICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1922, Page 2

SUMMARY JUSTICE.

BRAWL IN A RESTAURANT. A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY. Smarting under a sense of injury in that he thought he had been “taken down” by a man in a New Plymouth hotel, Michael Malone set out in pursuit of the alleged “welsher,” tracking him, as he thought, to the Piccadilly restaurant in Brougham Street. The drinks he had had, however, had somewhat blurred h'is memory, and inside the restaurant he proceeded to deal out summary “justice” to the wrong man, knocking him under the table. That was too much for Ernest Arthur Phillips, who was sitting with the assaulted one, but, when he rose to remonstrate, Malone let him have a blow on the left ear by way of an inducement to mind his own business,. The matter then became a personal one with Phillips, and he laid an information with the police, with the result that Malone appeared before Mr. A. M. Mowlern, S.M., at the Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning on a. charge of assault, to which he pleaded guilty. Senior-Sergeant McCrorie outlined' the case against the accused, on whose behalf Mr. A. A. Bennett expressed regret that he should have caused the trouble, particularly at this time of the year when a man’s feelings should be dominated by a spirit of kindness. Malone, unfortunately, had had too much liquor, and it was a case of mistaken identitylie admitted now that the man he had first struck in the restaurant was not the man he wanted, while he had hit Phillips simply because he thought he was interfering. While, *of course, no man had a right by law to strike a fellow man, Mr. Bennett submitted that there were extenuating circumstances, and that the court would recognise that a man had great difficulty in restraining himself when he was- in a similar position to that of the accused. Malone had not made any attempt to hide himself or deny the offence, and he had also made arrangements to pay the proprietor of the restaurant for any damage he might have caused. Tn imposing a fine of £3, with witnesses’ expenses 18s, Mr. Mowlern remarked that the accused had got himself into a very serious position. He could be sent ’to prison without the option of a fine for the offence he had committed. “You have done the decent thing evidently,” he concluded, “but T hope you will realise that the court has treated you in a different way from which you treated other people. I am quite lenient.”