LICENSING LAW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 April 1938, Page 7

LICENSING LAW

SOME PROVISIONS OF ACT INADEQUATE IN OPINION OF WAIKATO MAGISTRATE (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HAMILTON, April 27. The opinion that there were inadequate provisions in the Licensing Act, 1908, was expressed by Mr S. L. Paterson, S.M., in the Magistrates’ Court, Hamilton, when a series of charges relating to breaches of the Act in the Commercial Hotel, Hamilton, on March 30 last led to prosecutions against a barman and licensee. Since the original Act was passed it has been considerably modified by subsequent statutes, amendments have been first made in 1910 and on seven occasions subsequently until the final alterations in 1920. Mr Paterson considered the Act urgently required overhauling. The charges brought before the magistrate by Sergeant T. Kelly, prosecuting for the police, related to allegations against Nelson Derham Culpan, licensee of the Commercial Hotel, that he allowed intoxicating liquor to be sold to a young under 21. Patrick Herlihy, barman employed in the same hotel, was charged with selling liquor to a youth and the youth concerned, Brian Coberhill McKenzie, aged 19, falsely representing himself as being 21 and, further, with aiding Herlihy to commit a breach. Culpan was convicted and fined £2. The barman, Herlihy, was convicted and fined £3 and in the case of the youth, McKenzie, the magistrate reserved decision.