UNUSUAL CASE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20456, 8 November 1934, Page 7

UNUSUAL CASE.

Purchase of Liquor After Hours. Per Press Association. PALMERSTON NORTH, This Day. An unusual case is being heard in the Supreme Court, before Mr Justice Blair. Police-Sergeaqt Angland is appealing against decisions of Mr Stout, S.M.. given at I'eilding in August, when three men. Albert Edward Hosken, Roy Gordon Ilosken, and John David Farmer, were charged with aiding the commission of an offence by the licensee of the Manchester Hotel, Feilding, D. P. Barrett, namely the sale of liquor after hours. The Magistrate in dismissing the charges had said that the defendants admitted to the police being on licensed premises after hours and procuring liquor but they were not found on the premises by the police. The Magistrate held that they could not be charged with a breach of th.: Licensing Act, contending that the Act was a special one; secondly, consideration of the penalties showed that it could never have been intended to render purchasers liable to the penal clauses of section 190. Under section 194, the maximum penalty was £2; under section 190 it was £2O. There could be no suggestion that the legislature intended such a penalty for one purchasing drink after hours who was not found by the police on the premises and that a person caught on the premises was only liable for a fine of £2; defendant was purchaser not a seller and it was straining the Justices of the Peace Act to sviggest that a purchaser aided the seller to sell his goods.

The hearing of the appeal is now