Epitaph club fined on pistol charge

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33869, 14 June 1975, Page 2

Epitaph club fined on pistol charge

The Epitaph Riders Motor-cycle Club, Incorporated, was fined $2OO by Mr F. G. Paterson, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday on a charge of unauthorised possession of a pistol.

On a further charge, of possessing a pistol for no lawful purpose, the club was convicted and ordered to pay costs. It pleaded not guilty to both charges.

The pistol was a sawn-off .22 Remington rifle which had been found by the police on November 17 at a house in Lincoln Road, known to be the clubrooms of the

group. The loaded and cocked weapon was found on a bed.

Mr G. M. Brodie appeared on behalf of the club.

On May 16, Mr Brodie told the Court that the prosecution of the whole club on the offence created some legal difficulty.

“What is involved is the common liability of a body corporate,” he said. The prosecution must allege that because a person had possession of something that possession “somehow” became a possession of a corporate body. “A company or society cannot be made vicariously liable for offences committed

by its members or officers,’ Mr Brodie said.

Imposing sentence, the Magistrate said this was not a large-scale, limited-liability company with many branch offices; it was a small social group, and it had at its clubrooms on a social occasion a loaded firearm which nobody would claim.

Were it not for the presumptions of the Arms Act it might be difficult to concede how a corporate body could be held responsible, he said.