UNUSUAL CASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1942, Page 4

UNUSUAL CASE

CHARGE AGAINST LICENSEE & CRICKETERS DISMISSED BY MAGISTRATE. FAREWELL DRINK WITHOUT PAYMENT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WANGANUI, This Day. An unusual licensing case was heard in the Magistrate’s Court when nine cricketers were charged with being illegally in a hotel after hours. The charges were the sequel to a cricket club end of season dinner, when cricketers were found in the licensee’s private bar at about 8.20 p.m., about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour after they had risen from dinner. No explanation was asked of them at the time, but’in Court the evidence was that a group, consisting mostly of executive members of the club, who were waiting to go on together to another gathering, beginning at 8.30 (nearly all the others attending the dinner having by this time left the premises), were invited by the licensee to have a farewell drink with him when the treasurer went and settled up for the dinner. An explanation that the men had been inivted to haye a farewell drink with him was given by the licensee in the bar at the time. No money changed hands and actually no liquor had been consumed when the police arrived, although some drinks had been poured. The Magistrate, Mr Salmon, said a licensee could supply liquor at any time to any person, other’ than a prohibited person, provided the transaction was not a sale, for the life of him he could not'see why their explanation should not be accepted, although the circumstances might have looked suspicious to the police. He dismissed charges against the licensee of selling, exposing for sale and keeping open for sale. After a charge against one cricketer of being illegally on premises had also been dismissed, the police withdrew the remainder of the charges.