ROYAL HOTEL CASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 March 1920, Page 8

ROYAL HOTEL CASE.

MAGISTRATE'S RESERVED DECISIOH. INFORMATIONS DISMISSED. In the Magistrate's Court yesterday Mr. T. A- B. Bailey, S.M., gave his reserved decision in the cases in connection with the Royal Hotel in which tie licensee (Win. George Emeny) waß charged with exposing liquor for sale after hours, and Ebenezer Wooldrid«« Wra. Fitzgerald, and Fred C. Fox we're charged with being unlawfully on licensed premises after hours.

the Magistrate said: "There is no doubt that at the time the police entered ' the liquor in the bar was exposed to anyone in the taproom. The question to be decided was whether the liquor was exposed for sale The case proved by the police of finding three men in a dark tap-room adjoining a lighted bar . . . raised a strong presumption of an exposure for sale". The circumstances of the men beino-'iii this room were, to put it mildly," extremely suspicious. The Magistrate remarked that if seemed rather extraordinary that the men had to be taken into the bar to get them out of the sitting-room. He' had inspected the premises and came to the conclusion that the arrangements of the place revealed an undesirable fault in architectural construction. Courts naturally view with suspicion.' the finding of persons .in the bars or tap-rooms of hotels after closing hours, and it .is not easy to convince the Court that men so found are there for legitimate objects." After carefully weighing the evidence the Magistrate came to the conclusion that Wooldridge was a boarder, and that Fox and Fitzgerald were bona-fide guests of the licensee, and the exposure of liquor to them was not an exposure Sot sale. The judgment concluded: "As I have already stated, the whole circumstances are extremely suspicious and in his own interests it would be a good thing if the licensee chose some other room for his sitting-room, or had some alteration made, so that guests who had to go out of the sitting-room would not have to go into the bar to be found there by the police later on." The informations were all dismissed. Mr- Bennett Intimated that he would convey his Worship's recommendations as to structural alterations in the building to the licensee.