Thirty convictions made under Tauranga's former unlawful liquor ban have been quashed in the High Court at Wellington.
Wellington barrister and Victoria University law lecturer John Miller has been handling a steady trickle of inquiries from people wanting to clear their names after being arrested last summer under the Tauranga District
Council's old liquor ban.
The ban turned out to be invalid after it was found it had not been advertised properly - but not before police had arrested about 600 people.
All but a handful pleaded guilty.
Mr Miller said he had offered to represent them free because it was constitutionally important that their convictions were wiped.
The first appeal to be tested in the High Court was virtually an open and shut case, he said.
Since then it had been a matter of presenting the paperwork and the court quashed the conviction.
Every week, another two or three people were seeking to have their convictions wiped.
In preparing the paperwork, Mr Miller said it had become obvious that some of the cases involved unlawful arrests.
He believed closer attention should be paid to the limits of powers under bylaws.
He said it should be about the visibility of liquor in a public place, not whether police stopped someone driving through the public place and found alcohol in the car boot.
Mr Miller said he sympathised with police trying to deal with drunken hoons, but police had to be careful they did not lay themselves open to a damages action under the Bill of Rights.
Many of the stories he had heard were from quite respectable New Zealanders, including the couple whose van was searched and a bottle of champagne found that was intended as a present. They were made to tip it into the gutter, then arrested.
The Tauranga District Council has since validated the bylaw and made minor changes to the scope of the liquor ban in Tauranga's downtown.
- NZPA
