ILLEGAL PRACTICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 14, 11 October 1927, Page 6

ILLEGAL PRACTICE

SELLING WEEKLY PAPER ON SUNDAY DEFINITION OF “PUBLIC PLACE” Palmerston North, October 10. Judgment on an iuterestiug legal question was delivered by Air. J. L. Stout, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, when he laid it down that it was an illegal business to sell a weekly newspaper on a Sunday in what comes under the definition of a public place. The matter was raised last week, when William Patrick Casey was charged with transacting business on Sunday. Casey had been seen to enter an hotel with a copy of a sporting newspaper, published in Wellington every Saturday uiglit. The defence raised at the hearing was that the act of distributing newspapers on a Sunday was not an offence under the Act. It was contended by defendant’s counsel that the preparing, printing, and publishing of a newspaper was a calling exempted from the requirements of the Act, and that defendant had been doing nothing else than publishing the newspaper concerned. Counsel also contended that an hotel on a Sunday was not a public place as defined by the Act. Decision was reserved, and was given ,to-day. The Magistrate agreed with counsel for the defence that the office of an hotel was not a public place as defined by the Act, but pointed out that the clause exempting newspapers referred only to daily newspapers. The paper concerned in this case was a weekly paper, and therefore counsel’s contention on that score would have to be passed over. The position, therefore, was that defendant was not entitled to sell this newspaper in the street, or in anv public place as defined by the Act. In'this case, however, the requirements of the Act had not been broken, and the charge against defendant would therefore have to be' dismissed.