LICENSING ACT

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1938, Page 11

LICENSING ACT

NEED FOR OVERHAUL. [pie press association.] HAMILTON, April *27. Tho opinion that there, were inadequate provisions in the Licensing Act, 1908, was expressed by Mr. S. L.. Paterson, S.M., in tho Magistrate’s Court at Hamilton, when a series of charges relating to breaches of the act in the Commercial Hotel, Hamilton, on March 30 last, led to prosecutions against a barman and the licensee. Since tho. original act was passed, it has been considerably modified by subsequent statutes, amendments having been first made in 1910 and seven times subsequently, until the final alterations in 1920. Mr. Paterson that the act urgently required overhauling. Tho charges brought, before the Magistrate by Sergeant T. Kelly, prosecuting for the police, were that Nelson Derhani Culpan, the licensee ol th© Commercial Hotel, allowed intoxicating liquor to be sold to a youth under 21. Patrick Herlihy, a. barman, employed in the same hotel, was charged with selling liquor to a youth, and the youth concerned, Brian Coberhill McKenzie, aged 19, a tinsmith, of Frankton, was charged with falsely representing himself as being 21, and lurtlier, with aiding Herlihy, the barman, to commit a breach. Culpan was convicted and fined £2, Herlihy was convicted and lined £3, and in the case of McKenzie, the Magistrate reserved his decision.