PRIVATE HOTELS AND CASUAL CALLERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1158, 20 June 1912, Page 20

PRIVATE HOTELS AND CASUAL CALLERS.

AN UNSUCCESSFUL APPEAL. An important case concerning the liability of private hotel and board-inghouse-keepers to provide meals for casual callers was heard at the Supreme Court, Auckland, before Mr. Justice Edwards, on, Friday, when the Labour Department appealed against the decision of Mr. F. V. Frazer, S.M., given in the action Inspector of Factories v. Mrs. Scherf, proprietress of “Glenalvon.” Mr. Selwyn Mays ap-

peared for the Crown and Mr. H. P. Richmond for the respondent. The original information was laid under the Shops and Offices Acts, 1908, and the Amendment Act, 1910, Mrs. Scherf being charged that being proprietress of a restaurant, to wit “Glenalvon,” she did fail to keep a wages and time bool’, as provided by the Amendment Act 1910. The facts were agreed on, and one point which meant the root of the whole case, was that meals were not supplied to any persons but lodgers or lodgers’ guests. This case was brought as a test case, in order to ascertain whether establishments such as ‘ Glenalvon” came within the scope of the above mentioned Acts. Mr. Frazer decided that on the facts “Glenalvon” did not come within such definition, and dismissed the information.

Mr. Mays, in opening the case, stated that the object of the appeal was to obtain a Supreme Court judgment upon the point involved, for the guidance of the Department in administering the Act. The chief argument he would rely upon was that if ’‘Glenalvon” and similar institutions were not within the scope of the Amendment Act, then a very large number of employees in these institutions throughout the Dominion would be shut out from all its benefits, while a similar number of employees doing precisely the same work in the licensed hotels and restaurants would get the protection of the better conditions provided for by law. In other words, it could not have been the intention of the law that a housemaid, say, at the Grand Hotel, should have her hours of work limited and duly recorded in a time book, whilst a housemaid at “Glenalvon” doing similar work should be outside the Act. His Honour, without calling upon Mr. Richmond for the respondent, said that whatever the policy of the Act might be, he was bound by the plain meaning of the words in Subsection 2, and to his mind the words “general public” meant “general public,” and he knew that if a person from off the street, not a lodger, came to “Glenalvon” and asked to be supfrom off the street, not a lodger, came to “Glenalvon” and asked to be supplied with a meal, that person would not be supplied, and unless such persons were supplied, the establishment did not come within the meaning of the word “restaurant,” as defined by the Act. His Honour referred to the fact that at higher class boarding houses only the better class of persons were received, that was, people who could afford to pay more. “Imagine a man off the wharf going into ‘Glenalvon’ or any such boardinghouse,” remarked his Honour facetiously, “and saying, ‘well, missus, I want dinner.’ If that state of things prevailed, the Hon. Mr. Bryce or some high Duke, for instance, might be sitting alongside a man from the wharf, or the Chief Justice might have a wharf labourer on one side and a coal lumper on the other.” Continuing, his Honour said that Mr. Mays had taken the argument for the appellant as far as it could be taken, but the position could not be altered, and the appeal would therefore be dismissed.