SHOPS KEPT OPEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 123, 27 May 1930, Page 11

SHOPS KEPT OPEN.

■ ANZAC DAY ACT EXAMINED. IMPORTANT CASE AT ROTORUA. (By Telegraph.*—Press Association.) ROTORUA, Monday. A case of unusual importance was heard in the Magistrate's Court to-day, before Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M. Several shopkeepers were • charged under -the Shops and Offices Act with keeping open on the statutory half-holiday in the week in which Easter Monday and Anzac Day fell.

The Shops and Offices Act provides that where shops'-arc closed on two working, days during the week.they may remain open on the day of the statutory half-holiday. "A working'day is denned by the Act as "any day other than Sunday." , '."'-., The Labour Department contended that the effect of the Anzac Day Act was to make Anzac Day a Sunday, and therefore it was not a working day as defined by the Shops and Offices Act.

After referring to-the various Acts involved, the magistrate decided to dismiss the information upon the ground that the Anzac Day Act provided that the day should be observed as if it were a Sunday, but this did not make it a Sunday. He .quoted from a decision of the late Mr. Justice Sims, that the effect of the Anzac Day Act was simply that if anything had to be done on. a Sunday it also had to be done on Anzac Day, and if a thing had not to be done on a Sunday then it had not to be done on Anzac Day. This was very different from making the day a Sunday.