CONVICTION OF GROCER

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28752, 25 November 1958, Page 4

CONVICTION OF GROCER

Appeal To Supreme Court

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 24. After hearing legal submissions by counsel, Mr Justice Boys, in the Supreme Court at Auckland today, reserved his decision in an appeal by Wyn Abel, Ltd., grocers, of Whangarei, against a magistrate's conviction for failing to have suitable scales in a convenient place in a shop. Mr J R. Herd, S.M., fined the firm £1 with costs, in a prosecution brought by the Department of Labour in September. Self-service stores would be placed in an impossible position if they were required to have scales available so that customers could weigh goods for themselves, said Mr B. C. Spring, for the appellant. The effect of the Magistrate’s decision was that the scales should be available for the use of customers, but this, Mr Spring submitted, was not the intention of the Weights and Measures Act, under which the prosecution had been brought The true meaning of the act he said, was that scales should be in a place convenient to the vendor. It was obviously not the legislators’ intention that purchasers should be able to weigh goods. What was intended, counsel suggested, was that no offence was created unless there was a refusal by the vendor of a customer’s request to weigh goods. In the present case there had been no refusal to weigh goods and the scales could have been seen by purchasers. Mr H. Rosen, for the department, submitted that the general purpose of the section of the act under discussion was the protection of retail purchasers—to ensure that in shops there was a suitable weighing machine available so that goods could be weighed in the presence of the customer. The act set out that scales must be in a place in a shop where they could clearly be seen by customers.