Borough of Temple v. General Baking Co.

22 Pa. D. & C. 380, 1934 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 376
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Berks County
DecidedDecember 3, 1934
Docketno. 22
StatusPublished

This text of 22 Pa. D. & C. 380 (Borough of Temple v. General Baking Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Berks County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Borough of Temple v. General Baking Co., 22 Pa. D. & C. 380, 1934 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 376 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1934).

Opinion

Shanaman, J.,

The Borough of Temple, operating under The General Borough Act of May 4, 1927, P. L. 519, has an ordinance dated April 2, 1923, numbered “bill no. 4,” and entitled: “An ordinance regulating sales by itinerants, hawkers, etc., and establishing license fees for the same, and providing penalties for violation of same.”

Section 1 provides: “Butchers, bakers, fruit sellers, canvassers, peddlers, hawkers and all persons offering for sale their wares in the Borough of Temple . . . shall pay a license fee of $10 per annum, or $1 per day.”

Section'2 exempts “milk venders, and farmers and truckers selling their own produce . . . from payment of any license fees.”

Section 3 imposes fines for violations of the ordinance and, in default of payment thereof, a penalty of imprisoment. The above-recited clauses constitute the whole ordinance.

General Baking Company, the defendant, has resisted payment of the license fee, and the matter is before us on a case stated. The case stated sets forth [381]*381that the defendant is a corporation chartered under the laws of New York and engaged in the manufacture, sale, and distribution of bread and bakery products; that it is licensed to do business in Pennsylvania and has a bakery at Reading, Pa.; that defendant’s employe, one James Haughney, in return for salary and commissions, represents it in the sale of its products in the Borough of Temple and delivers, every day except Sunday, bread and bakery products, all manufactured by defendant, over defendant’s regular route to defendant’s regular customers in Temple and the vicinity, and uses a motor vehicle owned and maintained by defendant to make the deliveries; that defendant has carried on this business for a long time; that all sales are made by said Haughney on defendant’s behalf at retail, for the account and risk of defendant; that “some of his sales are made by order received in advance, but in general he fulfills the daily requirements of his regular customers”; that “he does not ‘hawk’ his goods by public outcry or in any other similar manner”; that the products are of the highest standard of purity and excellence and are manufactured under sanitary conditions in a plant which is subjected to strict regulations and inspection by Federal and State agencies.

“In our determination [upon a case stated], we are confined to the facts agreed upon, and no others. Whatever is not expressly and distinctly agreed upon and set forth as admitted must be taken not to exist”: Shoener v. County of Schuylkill, 107 Pa. Superior Ct. 114, 116.

“. . . a case stated should set forth ... all conceivable relevant facts”: Hebron et al. v. Magda, 280 Pa. 508, 510.

There is no allegation that Haughney ever solicits orders anywhere from old or new customers, that he ever sells to any but regular customers, that he ever sells from and in the street, that he ever canvasses new persons as prospective customers, or that his sales are ever made in the houses of the customers. The only clause bearing on the matter is that “some of his sales are made by order received in advance, but in general he fulfills the daily requirements of his regular customers.” The use of the phrase “regular customers” may indicate that some of his orders are received in advance, either from new customers or for the extraordinary requirement of an old customer, but that most of his orders are the delivery of regular unchanging requirements in accordance with prior instructions of old customers. As far as appears from the case stated, his deliveries may all be based on telephone orders or old understandings with his customers. In deciding this case, we are, as shown above, limited to what is “expressly and distinctly agreed upon and set forth as admitted” in the case stated. On the case stated, we cannot find as a fact that he is either a peddler, a street seller, a hawker, or a house-to-house canvasser, because the record contains no facts to support such a finding.

“We do not think the court could properly declare, as a pure question of law, whether the transactions amounted to sales on the streets or whether they were but, as the defendant contended, deliveries on the street from house to house of meat previously ordered from the shop. We believe that question was a mixed one of law and fact which could only be determined by the jury after proper instructions by the court”: Phœnixville Borough v. Eyrich, 42 Pa. Superior Ct. 241, 245.

The present case is on a case stated, where, as shown above, it is even more important to state clearly and fully the facts relied upon by the pleader.

In Commonwealth v. Abbotts Alderney Dairies, 62 Pa. Superior Ct. 451, the appellant was a dealer in milk, who purchased in quantity, pasteurized it, and resold it in bottles at retail to customers to whom delivery was made by appellant’s employes driving appellant’s vehicles. The question involved was whether [382]*382appellant was a dealer within the mercantile license law. The court said (p. 454):

“That the appellant is a dealer cannot he successfully denied. ‘A dealer in the popular and therefore in the statutory sense of the word is one who buys to sell again’: Norris Bros. v. Com., 27 Pa. 494. It has fixed and permanent places of business, it is buying and selling merchandise and is, therefore, suhjeet to a mercantile tax. It was the purpose of the statute to impose such tax on permanent dealers having a place of business within the county: Com. v. Amer. Tobacco Co., 173 Pa. 531. The assessment is not on the sales, however, but on the dealer. It is not important, therefore, whether those sales are actually made from the wagons sent out from the place of business or are made in the store. The drivers of wagons are not peddlers; they are the agents of the appellant distributing its goods in a way convenient for the seller and buyer; but the appellant is none the less a dealer in merchandise. The business has its direction and control in the central office; the merchandise is shipped therefrom and although a large proportion of the business is conducted in the familiar method employed in the sale of milk in towns and cities the operation is a commercial one conducted from a permanent place and in the application of the taxing law should properly be held to be a subject of taxation. In this view of the case it is not material whether the title to the quart of milk was transferred at the time the driver delivered the bottle or whether it was received by the purchaser at Chestnut street or Armat street.”

In New Castle v. Cutler, 15 Pa. Superior Ct. 612, 625, the same court said:

“The leading primary idea of a hawker and peddler is that of an itinerant or traveling trader, who carries goods about, in order to sell them, and who actually sells them to purchasers, in contradistinction to a trader who has goods for sale and sells them in a fixed place of business.”

“The peddler is a transient, with no fixed place of business, who seeks customers by invading their homes, and makes sales by persuading people to buy what they do not need, and who, by the time he is wanted to answer for his representations and engagements, is out of sight and out of reach of process”: Commonwealth v. Gardner et al., 133 Pa. 284, 289.

In Commonwealth v. McKendry, 21 D. & C. 383, the facts included an admitted solicitation of new business from house to house. In Commonwealth v. Gardner et al., 133 Pa. 284, supra, North Wales Borough v. Brownback, 10 Pa. Superior Ct. 227, Commonwealth v. Pennisi, 84 Pa. Superior Ct. 439, and Warren Borough v.

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Related

Chambersburg v. Porter
82 Pa. Super. 421 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1923)
Commonwealth v. Pennisi
84 Pa. Super. 439 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1924)
Shoener v. County of Schuylkill
163 A. 319 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1932)
Norris Bros. v. Commonwealth
27 Pa. 494 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1856)
Borough of Warren v. Geer
11 A. 415 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1887)
Sayre Borough v. Phillips
24 A. 76 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1892)
Commonwealth v. American Tobacco Co.
34 A. 223 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1896)
Hebron v. Magda
124 A. 674 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1924)
Burgess of North Wales v. Brownback
10 Pa. Super. 227 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1899)
New Castle v. Cutler
15 Pa. Super. 612 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1901)
Mechanicsburg Borough v. Koons
18 Pa. Super. 131 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1901)
Phœnixville Borough v. Eyrich
42 Pa. Super. 241 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1910)
Commonwealth v. Abbotts Alderney Dairies
62 Pa. Super. 451 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1916)
Norristown Borough v. Puleo
69 Pa. Super. 265 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1918)
Commonwealth v. Gardner
19 A. 550 (Schuylkill County Court of Quarter Sessions, 1890)

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Bluebook (online)
22 Pa. D. & C. 380, 1934 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 376, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/borough-of-temple-v-general-baking-co-pactcomplberks-1934.