PROSECUTION OF LICENSEE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27151, 22 September 1953, Page 3

PROSECUTION OF LICENSEE

ACTION BY POLICE COMMISSIONER

MAGISTRATE EXPRESSES GRATIFICATION

(New Zealand. Press Association} NAPIER, September 21

The charge had been laid at the direction of the Commissioner of Police, said Inspector E. J. C. Hay, of Wellington, in the Napier Magistrate’s ■Court today, when prosecuting a hotel licensee on a charge of having sold liquor in prohibited hours. Reginald Maurice Louisson, licensee of the Waverley Hotel, Greenmeadows, was convicted and fined £9.

The charge was a sequel to the prosecution three weeks ago of Louisson’s wife on a charge of having supplied liquor after hqyrs. On that occasion the Magistrate, Mr W. A. Harlow, criticised the police for not bringing a charge against the licensee. Not charging Louisson “bore the appearance of favouritism,” he said. Before Louisson pleaded to the charge this morning Mr Harlow said it would be as gratifying to the public as to the Court to find that a charge had now

“The Commissioner of Police has no doubt at all as to the vicarious responsibilities of the licensee for the acts of his wife in making sales of liquor on the Sunday afternoon in question.” said Inspector Hay. He added that the police now felt that Mrs Louisson was not the licensee’s agent for a limited and specific purpose, but was in fact his alter ego. After hearing evidence, the Magistrate fined Louisson £9. “You cannot have your bar develop into a social centre,” he told the defendant.