WHISKY IN DRY AREA

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 September 1923, Page 8

WHISKY IN DRY AREA

MAGISTRATE’S DECISION UPSET. “At this rate the man cannot take a bottle of whisky with him on the express,” remarked Mr Justice Stringer in the Supreme Court at Hamilton in an appeal made by Owen Disdale against his conviction at Te Kuiti by Mr Platts, S.M., for taking a bottle of liquor into a prohibited area without having attached to the package a label distinctly stating the nature of its_contents and the name and address of the person to whom it was being sent. Mr C. Finlay appeared for Disdale and Mr H. T. Gillies represented the Crown.

The facts of the case were that Disdale, returning home to Kakahi, near Te Kuiti, after a visit to the Waikato Hunt Club race meeting last October, bought a bottle of whisky as refreshment for his homeward journey. The bottle was opened on the train, and Disdale entertained several companions, tne wrappings being torn off at the same time that the bottle was opened. The race train arrived late at Te Kuiti, with the result that Disdale and his companions missed connecting with the Kakahi train. They therefore had to wait on the Te Kuiti platform for about two hours for the next train. During all this time a constable had had them under observation, and while Disdale was promenading on the platform the “arm of the law” accosted him and asked him for liquor. Disdale produced the bottle, which was by this time half-emptied. He was later charged before the magistrate at Te Kuiti, and was convicted and fined £5 1/- in addition to costs.

Mr Finlay contended that the section of the Act under which Disdale had been convicted did not refer to liquor taken in by a man on his own person; secondly, that the Act had been complied with in that the nature of the contents of the bottle was obvious ; and thirdly, that the regulation that the name and address of the person should be attached was complied with fully, in that the owner himself was attached. In any case, contended Mr Finlay, the bottle was not “a package.”

Mr Gillies maintained that the bottle was “a package.” His Honour held that section nine of the Act of 1914, under which the conviction had been entered, did not apply to the case under review, but only to cases where whisky was sent from one man to another. His Honour was doubtful whether a bottle containing liquor taken in this way was “a package,” but there was no need to discuss this defence. The appeal would be upheld.