LIQUOR SUPPLIED AFTER HOURS

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23817, 10 December 1942, Page 6

LIQUOR SUPPLIED AFTER HOURS

BARMAN CONVICTED

MAGISTRATE REJECTS DEFENCE

Because he lodges and lias his meals at the hotel at which he is employed, a hotel servant cannot be classed as a lodger, and he is not entitled to the lodger’s privileges of treating friends to liquor. This decision was given in the Lyttelton Magistrate’s Court yesterday by Mr F. F. Reid, S.M., when Leslie Peters, barman at the Mitre Hotel, was charged with supplying liquor after hours. Mr F. D. Sargent appeared for the defendant, who pleaded not guilty. Evidence for the prosecution was that a police sergeant and constable had entered the hotel at night and had found two men and the barman in the kitchen with a partly consumed bottle of beer and glasses on a table. The defendant gave evidence that he lived in Richmond, but because of his hours of work went home only one night a week and at week-ends, lodging at the hotel at other times. He had asked the two men to the hotel to play cards that evening, and during the day had bought from another hotel two bottles of beer with which to entertain his guests. The licensee, Charles Shearman, in evidence, said that he had been compelled to allow Peters to lodge at the hotel lor part of the time in order to secure nis services. When the police called the witness was out and had the keys of the bar. Peters had no access to the bar. Mr Sargent submitted that when the barman had finished his duties for the day, he ceased to be a servant and became a lodger. As a lodger he was entitled to entertain friends and provide them with liquor. “That would be opening the door too wide, Mr Sargent,” said the Magistrate. “It would mean that every housemaid, as soon as her hours of duty were finished, could bring in friends and treat them to liquor without restraint.” He could not accept the view that a hotel employee could take off the cloak of a servant at will and assume that of a lodger. The defendant would be convicted nd fined the minimum penalty of £lO nil ordered to pay costs-.