DEEMED INTOXICATED

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 55, 6 March 1937, Page 15

DEEMED INTOXICATED

AN AUCKLAND DRIVER

THREE BOTTLES OF BEER

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, March 5,

. A fine of £15 was imposed and his driving ■ licence cancelled ..- for .nine months when a farmer and milk vender, Bertram Edmund Bezar, aged 30, appeared before Mr. C. R. Orr-Walker, S.M., in the Police.Court, and pleaded, not guilty to a charge of being intoxicated in charge of a motor-van in Queen . Street. on February 23., .

Summarising the evidence, the Magistrate said it showed that the defendant had consumed three bottles of beer on the afternoon of his arrest, yet beyond the fact that his breath smelled of liquor he gave no other signs of intoxication when examined by two doctors some time later.'-- Allowance had to be made for the possible tendency of. the police after being infOTmed. that an intoxicated driver had bumped into another car and the possible wrong tendency of a doctor supporting his own patient.

"I have formed the opinion that the accused was unquestionably intoxicated at the time of• his arrest," the Magistrate continued. "It is not for me to say how much he was intoxicated at that material time, for it is possible his condition had improved by the time he. was medically examined."

The Magistrate said, in reply to counsel's appeal for retention of the licence,1 that'forfeiture of the licence had to be regarded as part of the penalty in such cases,-