LICENSING ACT APPEAL

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1929, Page 11

LICENSING ACT APPEAL

AN ILLEGAL SALE ALLEGED MAGISTRATE'S VIEW QUESTIONED. FULL COURT RESERVES VERDICT. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. The Full Court, consisting of the Chief Justice (Hon. M. Myers) and Justices Herdman, Adams and Smith, was engaged to-day hearing the appeal of Charles Petersen, police officer, of Dunedin, from the decision of Mr. OrrWalker, S.M., dismissing an information laid by him against Arthur Albert Paape, licensee of the Grand Hotel, Dunedin, on January 31, 1929, charging Paape witli selling liquor at a place not authorised by the license. It was alleged- by the police that defendant employed a commercial traveller named Smith to travel round obtaining orders for liquor. Smith called on one Breen, at Timaru, and obtained from him an order lor certain liquor on terms of delivery. On the receipt of the cash the liquor was forwarded by carriers to Breen. The magistrate held that the evidence was insufficient to establish a complete sale away from the hotel, and dismissed the charge. Mr. A. E. Currie appeared for the informant and Mr. W. Perry for the defendant.

Mr. Currie said the appeal was taken on the ground that despite the acceptance of a contract which in law took place at the hotel there was a sale within the popular meaning of the word at Timaru constituted’ by the actual delivery and payment there, and it was this sale which amounted to a breach of the Licensing Acts. The word “sale” in the Licensing Act must be interpreted in the popular sense of the word.

He submitted that the purported appropriation of goods to a contract at the hotel in Dunedin could not be such as to establish a complete sale, and that the actual appropriation completing the sale did not take place until the goods were delivered at Timaru. This substantial part of the completion of the contract occurring at Timaru amounted to a breach of the Act.

Mr. W. Perry, for the defendant, submitted that if the essential elements of a sale take place on licensed premises, even though the goods are delivered off them, then no offence had been committed. He contended all the essential elements in this case took place at the hotel, and further that there was an actual appropriation when the liquor was selected and cased, and that then the property in the goods passed to the buyer. Decision was reserved.