MOSGIEL COURT

Evening Star, Issue 22686, 28 June 1937, Page 12

MOSGIEL COURT

INTOXICATED MOTORIST FINED As the result of a collision before daybreak on Friday morning last at Mosgiel, John Joseph Stewart, a taxi driver, of Burnside, appeared before the Mosgiel Court and was fined £lO, with medical fee (£1 Is), and bad his license suspended until May 31, 1938. He pleaded guilty to a charge of being intoxicated while in charge of a motor car. Messrs A. F. Quelch, J.P., and John Logan, J.P., were on the Bench. Mr W. P. Hartstonge appeared for the defendant. Constable Phillips said that about 9 p.rn. on Thursday the defendant left Dunedin in his taxi for Middlomarch with four passengers. When ho was returning along Gordon road, Mosgiel, about 6.40 on the following morning he drove on tho wrong side of the road. Dr Shaw, who was returning after having attended a patient, had just stopped his car outside his gate, when the defendant’s car collided with it, damaging the running board and the right rear mudguard. Dr Shaw went to the taxi and found the defendant to be intoxicated. Dr Spedding also examined Stewart and pronounced him to be unfit to drive a car. Mr Hartstonge, who admitted the facts, said tho defendant had had difficulty in travelling the drifts of snow on the road from Middlemarch, and had taken the liquor with the four passengers in the taxi. He had had no tea on the previous evening, with the result that the liquor took effect. Counsel submitted that it was a borderline case, and suggested that ns the defendant was the sole supporter of his widowed mother and relied on his driving for a livelihood the fine should be increased instead of.imposing a long suspension of his license.