LEGAL & MAGISTERIAL NOTES

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume X, Issue 479, 28 September 1899, Page 19

LEGAL & MAGISTERIAL NOTES

At the Auckland Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday, the 20th instant, before Mr T. Hutchison, S.M., Mrs Elizabeth Luks, the licensee of the Thames Hotel, Queen Street, was charged with Helling liquor before the statutory time for opening the bar. The case was conducted by Sub-Inspector Wilson for the police, and Mr Baume appeared for the defendant. The evidence of Sergeant Gordon and Thomas Beeney, was corroborative of constable Matthew, who said that while doing duty in Queen Street at a quarter to six a.m. on September 13, he saw a man, named Thomas Beeney, enter the Thames Hotel by the Custom Street entrance, with a jug in his hand. After a few minutes he came out, and the constable followed the man and said, < * What have you got there ?’ ’ The man. at the time was walking towards a restaurant, situated abouty forty yards from the hotel. In reply to the constable, Beeney said “ Beer,’’ and the constable then said, 44 Come on back with me, till I see who served you.” Beeney said, “ You need not be so particular,” and the constable and Beeney then entered the hotel from Custom Street. The doors of the passage were wide open, where a man was engaged scrubbing.. They turned to the right and faced an open slide, with a shelf where all the paraphernalia of the public bar could be seen. Mr Henry Luks was inside the bar, and the constable said to him, “ Did you serve this beer?” Mr Luks replied “ Yes,” and witness said, “It is before opening time.” Mr Luks remarked : “ Only five minutes,” and. the constable replied, “ A quarter to six is the right time.” Mr Luks did not deny that he had received 6d from Beeney for the beer. Witness then took the beer into his possession. The passage doors of the hotel facing Queen Street were also wide open at the time, After the police had given the Thames Hotel a very good character, Mr Baume, for the defence, said the sale was admitted. The bar had been foolishly opened by the night porter for the purpose of serving a man who had told him it was six o’clock. Mr Baume therefore asked His Worship to dismiss the case under the 87th section of the Justices of the Peace Act, 1882, as a conviction would entail the endorsement of the license. The defendant had been hotelkeeping for thirty-eight years, and had never been before the Court previously. His Worship, in the course of judgment, said this was one of those cases in which one regretted that there was no discretion left to the magistrate in the matter of endorsing the license in the event of a conviction. One could understand that there was a difference between selling liquor at twelve o’clock at night and at a few minutes before the opening of the hotel. There could, he thought, be no doubt from the admissions of the police, that Mrs Luks had kept her hotel strictly within the law until this occasion, which seemed to him to be rather a trivial one, although the police were right in bringing the case to Court. The offence was proved, but the information would be dismissed under section 87 of the Justices of the Peace Act.

In the course of his judgment in the Meehan case Mr Brabant, S.M., said: —The defence raised by Mr Baume was that the def andant having according to the evidence sold the beer to the man. he could not be convicted under the present information of selling it to Margaret Wilkie, and further that the defendant did not knowingly and willfully supply liquor to a drunken person. His Worship had postponed his decision in order that he might look into the well-known English case of Scatchard v. Johnson, deailing with the point raised by Mr Baume. That case was an appeal from a conviction of a publican who had sold liquor to a sober person for consumption by one who was intoxicated, who had entered the public house with him ; the information alleging, as in the present case, sale to the intoxicated person, and the section of the English Licensing Act under which it was laid being similar to section 146 of the New Zealand Act. The conviction was affirmed. There was, however, one important difference between that case and the present one, viz., that the liquor in the English case appeared to have been supplied direct to the intoxicated person, and the justices who heard the appeal case stated their opinion that the liquor was knowingly supplied to that person. He did not think it mattered whose hand conveyed the glass of beer to the hand of Margaret Wilkie, but he certainly thought that before he could convict the defendant on that information he must be satisfied on the evidence that the defendant knew at the time of sale to the .unknown man that the liquor was for consumption by an intoxicated person; or at least he must have failed to interfere when the fact came to his knowledge. It was no doubt a fact that after the glass of beer was handed to the woman the defendant had no time to interfere, as the policeman came in before she drank any of it. The case, said His Worship, concluding, was no doubt very near the line between conviction and dismissal, and he was aware that in respect, to charges against publicans for permitting drunkenness, the English authorities were very strong ; but ’he did not know of any authority that would support him in convicting on the present information, unless he could say that.he was satisfied, that the defendant’s explanation was untrue. The explanation was not improbable, and he was not satisfied that the defendant did see the woman before the policeman enteied, or that he did know that the liquor was intended for her. Neither was he fully satisfied that the defendant did not know, but, considering the good character given to the defendant by the police, and that he had been licensed for thirteen years without any charge having been brought against him, certainly if His Worship had only some doubt, he should give the defendant the benefit of it. The information would therefore be dismissed.