LIQUOR WITH SUPPER

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 148, 19 December 1929, Page 8

LIQUOR WITH SUPPER

AN IMPORTANT JUDGMENT

APPEAL DISMISSED

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.")

DUNEDIN, This Day. An important judgment (briefly reported yesterday) was given by Mr. Justice Kennedy in the case, in which the police appealed against tho finding of tho Magistrate in dismissing an information charging Philip Barling with selling liquor without being licensed to do so.

The facts were that in January last tho Council of Scottish Societies held a reception to Major M'Crae, of the .Old Country, in the Somerset Lounge ot the Savoy, Limited, for admission to which a charge of 5s was made. The defendant, the managing director of Savoy, Limited, had undertaken to permit the reception to be held in the Somerset Lounge, which was not a restaurant, and to provide supper, which did not include alcoholic liquor, and- all necessary service.; Prior to the reception Mr. M'Kenzie, a prominent supporter of the societies, obtained permission from the president and the vice-president to supply at his own cost liquor for the purposes of the reception, and tho liquor was sent to Somerset Lounge and was there taken charge of by the respondent. The persons admitted to the reception wore the guests and nominees of the council, and not of the defendant. Tho liquor was later served, with the respondent's knowledge and consent, by the employees of Savoy, Limited, as well as by members of the societies, to the guests present, some of whom had paid for admission. No employee of Savoy, Limited, was in charge of the door for the purpose of admitting thoße attending, or of collecting tickets, and the defendant was unaware of the public advertisement that tickets of, admission might be procured on payment. The Magistrate found that there was an absolute gift of liquor to the Council of Scottish Societies for the purposes of the reception. The Judge, in his judgment, said that if the liquor and other refreshments were supplied without charge, and if there was consequently no sale, by the council, no offence was committed, either by the council or by the respondent. The offence lay not in the supply of liquor but in a sale, or in a transaction in the nature of a sale. Before the respondent might properly bo found guilty of the offence charged, it must appear not only that the liquor was sold, but that the respondent was accessory to the illegal supply. It was not proper for tho Cotfrt to assume, as against the respondent,' that he had knowledge, and consequently to hold that he. must be taken to have known that the liquor supplied was the subject of sale or of a transaction in the nature of sale. If the respondent was in fact aware, the requisite evidence should have been available; and if such evidence was not adduced, it was not for the Court to reverse the Magistrate's determination and to record a conviction, when it could do so only by assuming without proof that tho defendant had knowledge. The appeal would therefore be dismissed.