SUNDAY TRADING CASES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5655, 28 August 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

SUNDAY TRADING CASES.

OBSERVATIONS BY MR JUSTICE

DENNISTON,

At the opening of the Supreme Court sittings on Monday his Honor Mr Justice Denniston made the following observations in reference to the reported remarks of Mr R. Beethain, S.M., in regard to the Sunday trading case heard on Saturday last : — " My attention has been directed to a report of a case against one Timothy Lyon for alleged Sunday trading. In that report the Stipendiary Magistrate is stated as in effect representing that some judgment of mine compels him, against his own conviction, to refuse to hold a transaction to be a sale or in the nature of a sale, whenever both the parties to it swear that the liquor was a gift. lam aware of no decision of mine to that effect. On the contrary, a reference to the reported case of Schulteis v. Wilson, 13 N.Z.R., 295, will show that I have decided directly the reverse. The head note to that case is in these words, "The fact that liquor is supplied to a person over the bar during prohibited hours by a person in charge of the bar is, notwithstanding the fact that botli persons sivear it was a gift, evidence upon which the presiding Magistrate may presume a sale, he having disbelieved that part of the evidence as to its being a gift ? If the magistrate referred, as I presume he did, to the ease of Hickson v. Moore, heard by me as an appeal, it in' no way justifies the use made of it. The appeal there .was an appeal on the facts. In such a case the appeal is really a new trial, on the evidence then adduced, and entirely independent o£ the previous hearing. On the special points of the case with (as I was careful to point out in my judgment) the advantage of certain evidence as to the character and reputation of the house and of the landlord in respect of Sunday trading not elicited in the Magistrate's Court, I, as a judge of first instance, came to the conclusion that there was sufficient doubt to justify me in holding that the statement as to a gift might be. true. A decision under such circumstances, on the facts of an isolated case, can only represent the effect of certain evidence on the mind of an individual magistrate. It neither asserts nor establishes any legal proposition, and has no binding authority upon, and should not affect the judgment of any other magistrate. It is the duty of every magistrate to decide every question of fact in accordance with the effect of theevidence on his own mind, and not upon the view taken, upon another occasion, similar perhaps, but certainly not identical, by another magistrate, even though that magistrate happen to be a judge of the Supreme Court. It is hardly necessary to point out that in every case the demeanour and character of the witnesses form so important an. element in deciding a disputed question of fact that, on that ground alone, any attempt to treat the decision on the facts of any <$ke case as governing others seems eminently unsatisfactory. I venture to say, with all respect, that a magistrate having formed a conclusion on the facts befox-e him is not entitled to decline to give effect to that conclusion because he takes .on himself to forecast and anticipate the conclusions which he thinks would be arrived at by the judge before whom, in certain circumstances, the case may be retried. I make these observations because I think it important that the Supreme Court should not, without contradiction, be publicly represented as responsible for a doctrine calculated to interfere with the satisfactory administration of the law, and which doctrine is directly opposed to what has been laid down by the Court. Of course I assume that the Stipendiary Magistrate has been correctly reported."