Counts against bar manager are dismissed

A district court judge has dismissed charges of liquor law breaches against a Palmerston North duty bar manager.

In what he described as a "clear-cut case", Judge Gregory Ross said Fitz Bar duty manager Jared Bradley Wallace had no case to answer on four charges of breaching the Sale of Liquor Act.

Wallace, 27, was charged with supplying liquor to intoxicated persons, allowing patrons to become intoxicated, allowing intoxicated persons to remain on the premises and allowing disorderly conduct in the bar.

He also faced an additional charge of criminal nuisance in relation to the death of a student, but after legal argument at the start of the defended hearing on Monday, Judge Ross dismissed that charge.

The charges were laid after the death of 19-year-old Massey University student William Cranswick in September last year.

Mr Cranswick had been drinking with four friends in the bar on the night of September 22.

Three of the charges related to trays of bourbon and Cokes bought and consumed by the men on the night.

The Crown had originally alleged Wallace had allowed the group to buy as many as six trays of 16 double bourbons over the course of the evening. However, Judge Ross did not accept that the man at the centre of the allegations - Mr Cranswick's friend Ben Burmeister - was sufficiently "intoxicated" for the charges to stick.

The charge of allowing disorderly conduct stemmed from a game of bullrush carried out by patrons inside the Fitz's main bar.

In the course of that game, Mr Cranswick bashed his head into another man's knee.

He fell to the ground, bashing his head a second time on the pub floor.

He died two days later.

In delivering his ruling, Judge Ross spoke to the family of Mr Cranswick, who were watching from the public gallery.

He said the court could provide "no definitive answers" for them, nor might any future criminal proceeding "be the catharsis they seek in relation to their dead son".

The court could only confine itself to strictly relevant matters, and could not be "a court of morals".

It was not the job of a criminal court to apportion blame or find scapegoats, he said.

Wallace asked his lawyer to express his sympathies to the Cranswick family.

Family left to wonder why

The family of William Cranswick is upset that no one has been held responsible for their son's death.

Judge Gregory Ross dismissed four charges under the Sale of Liquor Act against bar manager Jared Bradley Wallace in connection with William's death in September last year, ruling there was no case to answer.

He had earlier dismissed a charge of criminal negligence because it was improperly laid.

Mr Cranswick's father, Rod Cranswick, said he was upset that police had laid charges incorrectly.

"I don't really want to comment on the decision, but if the correct charges had been laid, then who knows?" he said.

"But now we have to carry on, I suppose. We have lost a valuable member of our family and that has knocked a great hole in us."

William's mother, Belinda Cranswick, said the family was not considering a private prosecution against the bar or Mr Wallace.

Senior Sergeant Murray Drummond, who was in charge of the case, did not think the charges could have been laid differently.

Police were considering whether to take action against Mr Wallace in relation to his manager's certificate.

- NZPA