ALLEGED SUNDAY TRADING

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 146, 17 December 1915, Page 8

ALLEGED SUNDAY TRADING

A charge .of Sunday trading was preferred in the Magistrate's Court before Mr. D. G. A. Cooper, S.M., to-day against John Timothy Foley, licensee of the Cricketers' Arms Hotel. . Mr. M. Myers appeared for the defendant, who pleaded not guilty. It appeared that at 11.30 a.m. on Sunday,' 28th November, a man named William Brown was stopped by a constable coming out of the.hotel with two bottles.of beer in his possession. He said he had bought them the night before and was taking them away. When the licensee was spoken to on the subject, Foley said that Brown was a lodger, that he had a perfect right to sell him liquor on Sunday or any other time, and that he knew that Brown was taking it away to some friends. The police disputed the statement that Brown was a lodger. Mr. Myers contended that the Act allowed a licensee to sell liquor to a lodger, but did not state that the liquor must not be consumed by people other than the lodger, and the Act, therefore, did not prohibit a licensee selling liquor to a lodger who might hand it to someone else for consumption off the premises. For instance, supposing a man living in an hotel was going to a picnic. There was nothing to prevent him buying liquor for consumption by people who went to that picnic. The only point that might arise was whether the lodger would sell the liquor that he purchased. If he knew that he would, perhaps, be committing an offence. Giving evidence, defendant said that Brown was a permanent lodger, and bought the beer as a lodger. He knew that he had previously taken liquor to a friend outside the.hotel. His Worship said he would take time to give his decision.