Hotel Licensee Fined For Permitting Drunken Man To Be In Bar

Wanganui Chronicle, 13 December 1949, Page 6

Hotel Licensee Fined For Permitting Drunken Man To Be In Bar

I “The licensee will have to be careful about the way he conducts his I premises,” said Mr. S. S. Preston, S.M., ,in the Magistrate’s Court, Wanganui, 'yesterday, when imposing a fine of {£lo, cost's 10s, on John Joseph Bourke, licensee of the Federal Hotel, who bad pleaded not guilty to a charge of permitting drunkenness on the premises. The magistrate referred to defendant’s previous convictions for licensing breaches and said he would have to be careful in future. Alan Royson Parker, barman at the hotel, who denied a charge of supplying liquor to a person already in a , state of intoxication, was also conIvicted, a fine of £2, costs 10s, being i imposed. I Senior-Sergeant A. F. Culloty prose- | cuted and Mr. C. F. Treadwell appeared for the defence. In evidence, Sergeant A. Carlyon said that at 5.45 p.m. on October 14, while making a routine inspection of hotels, he saw a man asleep on a seat at the end of the bar. The man was drunk and the barman said that he had come in 10 or 15 minutes previously, and that he would look after him. Parker also said that he would take the man up to his room and look after him. When asked for by witness, the licensee said that the man had only been in the hotel 10 or 15 minutes and that he would drive him home. I After hearing further evidence and i also witnesses called by the defence, ■ the magistrate said that he had no hesitation in accepting what tlje police I had said. There was not the slightest doubt that the man was on the premises when in a bad state of in- ‘ toxication. j “I am quite convinced that this man was intoxicated,” the magistrate added. “If he had just arrived no sensible licensee would have permitted him to remain on the premises.” Serving liquor to intoxicated persons was a serious offence, the magistrate added, imposing fines as stated.