IMPORTANT LICENSING CASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10063, 9 June 1910, Page 5

IMPORTANT LICENSING CASE.

A DECISION- REVERSED. By Telegraph—Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, June 8. In the Supreme Court, to-day, an important judgment of Mr Justice Chapman wa3 read in the appeal case of M. J. Suhan v. James Holmes. The appellant was convicted and fined £5 and his license endorsed for having permitted drunkenness on his licensed premises The facts were that a man who, when sober, had arranged for accommodation was subsequently found asleep on a form in the passage of the hotel in an intoxicated condition. The ground of appeal was that the man so found was on the premises unde/ his contract with the landlord to provide him with meals and lodging. His Honor, in allowing the appeal, held thst where a man comes to a hotel sober, and makes arrangements for accommodation and becomes a lodger, and is afterwards found by the police in an intoxicated condition, the landlord cannot be properly convicted of permitting dtunkenness, and t'hat the lodger had a right by contract to be on the premises. The appeal was allowed, and it was directed that the conviction be set ,aside. Mr J. A. Cassidy appeared for the appellant, and Mr Stringer, K.C., for the respondent.