KEG-BEER SALES

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30634, 28 December 1964, Page 10

KEG-BEER SALES

Six Appeals Allowed Six appeals against a decision of the Canterbury Licensing Committee granting two applications for extension of wholesale licences to authorise delivery of beer or stout in kegs have been allowed by the Licensing Control Commission and the decision of the committee reversed.

The appellants were Bernard Wallace Lawrence, James Vincent McCormack, Richard Lindsay Moffat, Lester James Mitchell, Arthur Francis Gordon McGregor, and Patrick Attwood Smith, represented by Mr J. G. Leggat. The respondents were Bishop and Company, Ltd. (Mr R. A. Young) and Maling and Company, Ltd. (Mr I. D. Bennetts).

The appeal was heard before Mr S. T. Barnett (chairman), Major-General Sir William Gentry, and Mr N. Butcher, in Christchurch on October 13.

The application by the two Christchurch wholesalers was made on the grounds that loss of the right to sell beer in bulk imposed considerable hardship in loss of trade, and that in the special circumstances of their business they were able to give a service which the average hotelkeeper or bottle-store attendant could not give. No Hardship Seen

In its reserved judgment, the commission said it failed to see how it could be said that the deliberate legislation to transfer part of a wholesaler’s business to hotelkeepers was of itself such a form of hardship as to entitle a wholesaler to the exercise of the committee’s discretion in his favour. “We note also that if we accepted the committee’s view that purely domestic wholesalers suffered hardship because they lost more business than trade wholesalers, all domestic wholesalers in New Zealand could claim hardship. This would go a long way to defeat the purpose of the act. “We are quite unable to see anything more than a natural desire not to lose trade, in one case estimated at 10 per cent or less of bottled beer sales, and in the other as having a limited effect on the company’s business. In our opinion there is nothing in the evidence that would justify a finding of hardship.”