MAGISTRATE’S COURT

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25250, 31 July 1947, Page 3

MAGISTRATE’S COURT

(Before Mr Raymond Ferner, S.M.) REMANDED Victor Horace Smith, aged 27 (Mr G. C. Weston), furniture manufacturer, was remanded to appear on August 6, on a charge that he was intoxicated in charge of a motor-car in Cashel street on July 23. Bail was allowed in self, £25. ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF TROUT For being found in possession of trout during a close season, William Percival Chatterton, a truck-driver, of Dunsandel (Mr H. W. Hunter), was fined £2. He pleaded guilty to the charge, which was brought by the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society (Mr M. J. Gresson). BREACH OF PRICE ORDER “You can scarcely argue that I should leave this man with his excess profits, and although no application has been made, I propose to take a course which will deprive him .of them,” said the Magistrate, when- John Llewellyn Powell, of Prebbleton (Mr A. B. Hobbs), pleaded guilty to two charges of selling potatoes at a price in excess of that allowed by a price order. Appearing for the Price Tribunal, Mr J. D. Hutchison said Powell, who was a grower, had sold two lots of potatoes on the same day to a West Coast firm. One lot comprised about seven tons, and the other about two tons. The price received was £3O a ton, but the price order allowed only £25 a ton, so that the defendant had made a total excess profit of about £56.

The tribunal could apply to the Court for an order requiring a person convicted to pay into the War Expenses Account such amount as the Court might decide of the money obtained as excess profit, Mr Hutchison said. In the present case he did not desire to make such an application. The Magistrate: If this application is not made, I will have to take into consideration the fget that he is holding £56 ill-gotten money. Potato growers had a bad season last year, and when the price order was gazetted in August, 1946, it could not take into account the frosts which affected the growers, said Mr Hobbs. The defendant said he was unaware of the price order at the time, although that was no excuse, and he felt that he would not dig the potatoes unless h-e got the price he charged, which was based on the coSt per lb. Because of the shortage of railway trucks, he had been put to considerable expense, and the excess profit was not as great as it appeared. On the first charge, a fine of £l9 was imposed, and on the second a fine of £47, costs and solicitor’s fees being additional in each case. MINIMUM FINE “That is most unfortunate,” the Magistrate said, when counsel for the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society (Mr M. J. Gresson) pointed out that there was a minimum fine of £5, half of which went to the society, when a person was convicted of taking or killing grey duck without a licence. "With some reluctance, I am compelled to inflict the minimum penaltv of £5,” the Magistrate said to Alexander Albert Mackintosh (Mr G. C. Weston). "If you should make application to the proper authority for partial remission of the fine, I will make a favourable recommendation.”

The general scope of the Animal Protection Act was that no one was allowed to shoot ducks without a licence, Mr Gresson said. There was an exception that any person in bona fide occupation of land, and any one son or daughter of that person might shoot game on that land during an open season. Such a person might also appoint another person to act in his stead, and the appointment had to be made in writing and approved by an acclimatisation society. Mackintosh was a trustee of the estate of his brother, Mr Gresson added, and it was submitted that he was not bona fide occupant of the lartd. The widow lived on the property, and there was a farm manager. Mr Weston submitted that his client was the bona fide occupant, as he was supervising the farm, and at the time he shot on the land there was no farm manager. He was strengthened in his view that Mackintosh was not the real, bona fide occupant by the reference in the act to a son or daughter of the occupant, said the Magistrate.

UNLICENSED RADIO On a charge of being in possession of an unlicensed radio, Patrick Joseph Aitken was fined 10s.