AFTER HOURS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 35, 10 August 1927, Page 10

AFTER HOURS

RIGHTS OF BARMEN

TO ENTERTAIN FRIENDS

INTERESTING DECISION

Exactly who is allowed to consume liquor on licensed premises after hours is a question that results in more prosecutions being brought under the Licensing Act than any other. Whether s barman is entitled to supply his own guests was the subject of an interesting reserved judgment given by Mr. E. Page, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court to-day.

The case was one in which Michael Burke, licensee of the City Hotel, was charged with selling liquor, exposing liquor for sale, and allowing liquor to be consumed when, his premises were directed by law to be closed. Three charges of unlawfully supplying liquor were made against Timothy O'Connell, the barman concerned.

At 6.22 p.m. on 23rd. June a Bergeant and a constable entered the hotel, and in the public bar found six men, three of them barmen employed there and the other three friends of one of these barmen. In front of the various men were glasses of liquor, partly consumed, and behind the bar, in his shirt sleeves, was the defendant O'Connell. The main door to the bar was locked, but a slide which looks into it from the passage was open. The bar was lit up and the licensee, Mr. Burke, was upstairs. The barman whose friends the three men were had returned to the hotel from his afternoon off, at about 6 0 clock, and had met them there by appointment. He asked them to wait while he wrote up his stock book for the following morning, and then called for drinks for the sis men present. These were supplied by O'Connell. The barman and his threo friends then went off to have tea at the house of one of them. Two of these three men were brothers-in-law, and the third one was their father-in-law. They were personal friends of the barman, whose practice it was to meet them each Thursday, which was his day off and to have tea with them at one of their homes. DECISIONS ANOMALOUS. "The decisions relating to the right of a person living in an hotel to supply liquor during closing hours to a friend who is hia bona fide guest seems to me to disclose an anomaly," said the Magistrate in his judgment. "Section 190 o± the Licensing Act provides that every person who, during closing hours, allows liquor, although purchased before the hour of closing, to be consumed on the premises, is liable to a fine. The only statutory exception to this provision is contained in Section 191, which provides that it shall be lawful'for but not obligatory upon, a licensee to sell liquor at any time to any person being really a lodger or staying on the premises It is, however, well established that this prohibition does not apply to the licensee, nor to his household/nor his family, nor his servants. . . • nor does it apply to the bona fide guests of a lodger or of the licensee. These exceptions are not contained in the Statute itself, but are there by necessary implication. "It has been held recently by the bupreme Court, however, that there is no exception in favour of the bona fide guests of the wife of the licensee t, isL ?2? our Mr- Justice -^ams held that the wife and the servant who supplied the liquor were both liable to a fine, notwithstanding that the persons to whom it was supplied were the wife's bona fide guests. . . Such persons are not entitled 'lawfully to be supplied,' except insofar as they are the guests of the licensee or of the lodger. If, however, they are such guests they seem to me to be entitled 'lawfully to be supplied.' . . .If a licensee may lawfully entertain his guest with liquor during closing hours 1 cannot think that a barman who actually supplied and handed round such liquor could be convicted. BOUND BY HIGHER COURT. "The result of the decisions then appears to be that a person other than a licensee may lawfully supply liquor to the guest of the licensee," or to the guest of a lodger, but not to the guest of the wife nor to the guest of a servant in the house. This result is not one at which I should have arrived at unaided, and I am unable to find in the statute a satisfactory basis for distinction. The decisions referred to are, however, binding on this Court." Burke was fined £1 for having unlawfully allowed liquor to be consumed, the other charges being dismissed. O'Connell was fined £5 and costs on one charge, and the others, at the suggestion of the Magistrate, were withdrawn because the act of supplying all six men constituted practically one offence. I At the hearing Mr. W. Perry appeared for both the defendants.