DISPENSARY WATER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 83, 10 April 1939, Page 3

DISPENSARY WATER

DOMESTIC IN USE

CURIOUS APPEAL CASE

MAY GO TO LORDS

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, March 14,

The Court of Appeal held that water used by a doctor when making up medicines was "water used for domestic purposes" and not subject to the additional charge made for non-domes-tic purposes. The case may go to the House of Lords.

Lords Justices Scott, Clauson, and dv Parcq dismissed an appeal by the Hull Corporation complaining of a decision by Judge Mitchell-Banks, K.C., at the Hull County Court disallowing a claim against Dr. Duncan Ferguson Yuille, of Beverley High Road, Hull, for 16s 6d respecting water used for medicines sold to patients.

Mr. R. M. Montgomery, K.C., for the Corporation, said the claim covered a period of nearly two years' at the rate Of 9s a year, which was the figure applicable to dispensaries and surgeries under the rate-charges published by the Corporation. Dr. Yuille had a hot and cold-tap in a partitioned-off part of his surgery at his house. He used the hot water for washing his hands and cleaning and disinfecting his surgical instruments and similar articles, and the cold for household drinking purposes and for making up medicines. The contention before the County Court Judge was that the water used for making up medicines for sale •to Dr. Yuille's patients was not domestic use of the water but that it was used for the doctor's trade or business, and could be charged for at the rate applicable to a druggist or dispensary.

JUDGE'S RULING

The County Court Judge considered that there was a distinction between the use of water for making up medicines by a druggist and a medical practitioner, because, ' while the druggist used water for medicines which he sold to the public at-large, the doctor merely diluted with water such medicines as he supplied to his own private patients.

The Judge held that the doctor, using the water for the combined purpose in his surgery, was using it for domestic purposes.

Mr. Montgomery contended that using water for making up medicines by a doctor was just like ujing water for making up bottles of lemon squash for sale to the public, and was a nondomestic use.

He said that when a publican added water to the whisky in a customer's glass on his premises that was ordinary domestic use of water. If he put water in a bottle containing whisky for the customer to take away that was non-domestic use of water. The matter really turned on whether the water was consumed on the premises or was taken away.

Lord Justice Scott: If you put water in a glass of whisky and hand it to your friend you are putting in water for his domestic purposes.

Mr. Montgomery: Yes, and my domestic purposes as well, which is his drinking it and for no other purpose. It is the same with the publican.

Mr. Harold Murpny. X.C.. for Dr. Yuille, argued that pouring water into medicine to dilute it was, an ordinary common domestic use of water. It was different, as the Judge had found, from the use of water by a druggist, who possibly used water as a component when compounding medicines.

Lord Justice Scott, giving judgment, said the important and interesting question raised by the appeal was whether doctors who dispensed their own medicines were to be treated differently from the ordinary resident of a house, or a person who used for domestic purposes water in an office or, it might be a factory, on the ground that the doctors' use of the water in dispensing medicines was a non-domestic use.

From the authorities it was clear that the criterion to apply must be consideration of the purpose for which the water was to be used.

"NECESSARILY DOMESTIC."

"In my view," said the Lord Justice, "where water is added to medicine as a dilutant for the purpose of drinking the diluted medicine, the purpose is necessarily a domestic purpose. I can imagine no more domestic purpose than internal administration.

"If you drink a glass of water you drink it for domestic purposes, and, if there is some medicine in it, you are none the less drinking it for domestic purposes.

"Where water is used for drinking, whether pure or with medicine—or whisky—in it, it seems to me to come quite plainly within the category of water used for domestic purposes.

"That involves the .dismissal of the appeal so far as the water used by the doctor for the dispensary is concerned.

"The other purpose for which water was used for was washing instruments. Washing or cleaning anything is prima facie a domestic purpose.

"I can see no ground for saying that, because they happen to be surgical instruments, the doctor is using the water for other than domestic purposes. The nature of the use is still domestic even though' the instruments are. going to be used in his professional practice."

Lords Justices Clauson and dv Parcq agreed, and the appeal was dismissed. Leave was given to appeal to the House of Lords.