LICENSING CASE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 250, 20 September 1929, Page 8

LICENSING CASE.

IMPORTANT JUDGMENT

Per Press Association. LEVIN, Sept. 19. An important judgment affecting the Bale and delivery of liquor, was given by Mr J. L. Stout, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court to-day in a case in which Richard Watts, secretary of a football club, and Evan Jones, licensee of the Levin Hotel, were charged —the former with being on licensed premises after hours and'the latter with selling liquor and keeping the premises open for such sale during prohibited hours. Watts purchased and paid for a jar of beer in the afternoon, and the barman placed the jar in a cupboard. Watts forgot to call for the beer until the evening, when he was found by a constable leaving the hotel with the jar under his arm on h>s way to a football “smoker.” The Magistrate found that the Court was bound by an English decision in the case of Bristow v. Piper (191 o), and that the sale was cmnpleted by the payment and appropriation of the goods during legitimate hours, and the information was, therefore, dismissed “It is true,” said the Magistrate “that this decision opens very wide the door to evade the provisions of the Licensing Acts, but that is a matter for the Legislature, which can close the door by decreeing that the contract is incomplete until the purchaser takes actual delivery of the liquor.” ..