Pittsburg Brewing Company's Brewer's License

12 Pa. Super. 176, 1899 Pa. Super. LEXIS 229
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedDecember 13, 1899
DocketAppeal, No. 6
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 12 Pa. Super. 176 (Pittsburg Brewing Company's Brewer's License) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pittsburg Brewing Company's Brewer's License, 12 Pa. Super. 176, 1899 Pa. Super. LEXIS 229 (Pa. Ct. App. 1899).

Opinions

Per Curiam,

The six judges who heard this appeal being equally divided in opinion the order is affirmed.

Opinion' by

Smith, J.,

December 13,1899:

It is unnecessary to consider the specifications relating to offers of evidence. These offers form no part of the record, and are not before us. The findings of fact by the court below are beyond review by us. The only question to be determined here is whether, in law, the court had authority to make th& decree. The denial of this authority, by the appellant, rests on the contention that the court cannot legally grant a brewer’s license if the applicant is interested in another brewery in [187]*187the same county, and further, that the power to grant a brewer’s license is taken away from the court of quarter sessions and given to the state treasurer by the Act of July 80, 1897, P. L. 464.

In none of the legislation on this subject is there express prohibition of a license under the circumstances here existing, nor express provision for it. The appellant, however, contends that a prohibition is implied in the following clauses of the petition required of the applicant by the Act of June 9, 1891, P. L. 257 :

“6. That none of the applicants are in any manner pecuniarily interested in the profits of the business conducted at any other place in said county where any of said liquors are sold or kept for sale, excepting those engaged or interested in the distilling or brewing business, who shall not be debarred from obtaining a wholesale dealer’s license under this act by reason of their interest in any distilling or brewing business.

“7. That none of the applicants are in any manner pecuniarily interested in the profits of the business conducted at any other place in said county where any of said liquors are sold or kept for sale, but the ownership of stock in an incorporated company distilling or brewing said liquors shall not debar the owner thereof from obtaining a license under this act.”

In construing these clauses, we must consider their purpose, the mischief at which they are aimed and the remedy which they provide, .and, to carry out the legislative intent, so construe them as to suppress the mischief and advance the remedy. Not infrequently, to give full effect to a remedial provision, a broader or a narrower significance must be imputed to the statutory language than its ordinary meaning would imply. As was said by the Supreme Court in Umholtz’s License, 191 Pa. 177, “ All legislation, especially that which relates to proceedings in the courts, is of a broader and more comprehensive scope, and is couched in more generic language, than is employed in the drafting of private contracts, and requires an interpretation conformable to its general purpose. Thus statutes are to be so construed as best to effectuate the intention of the legislature, though such construction may seem contrary to the letter.”

Previous to the passage of this act, the retail liquor traffic was largely promoted by the practice, on the part of brewers, [188]*188of supplying the means for opening eating houses, and sharing in the profits. In not a few instances, brewers owned and conducted eating houses, and to permit this the Act of April 20, 1858, P. L. 365, contained a proviso that the act should not be construed to prevent a brewer, otherwise qualified, from receiving an eating house license. This artificial stimulus to the retail traffic was the mischief which the clauses quoted were designed to remedy. To this end, with certain exceptions, they restrict the licenses for which they provide to persons not “pecuniarily interested in the profits of the business conducted at any other place in said county where any of said liquors are sold or kept for sale.” The exceptions permit a distiller or brewer to obtain a wholesale dealer’s license, and an owner of stock in a distilling or brewing company to obtain any license provided for by the act.

We regard the restrictive terms of the act of 1891, however, as limited to places where liquors are “ sold or kept for sale,” as distinguished from places where they are manufactured. Had the intention been to include the latter, we might fairly expect it to be clearly stated, and it could have been readily and fully expressed by the use of the word “ manufactured,” preceding the word “ sold.” The omission of even this word is significant. Places where liquors are retailed alone fall within the mischief which these clauses were designed to remedy. This is recognized in the exception permitting wholesale licenses to brewers and distillers. The obvious purpose was to cut up by the roots the manufacturer’s interest in the retail traffic. The interest of a manufacturer in more than one manufactory in no way interferes with this purpose, so long as an interest in retail sales is denied him. There is an obvious recognition of this in the exceptions to the seventh clause. By any other construction of the restrictive language of the act and its exceptions, every stockholder in a licensed brewing company may have also a license for a separate brewery, distillery, wholesale, bottling', rectifying or compounding establishment, while the entire body of stockholders, in their corporate capacity, cannot have a license for a second brewery. In our view, a situation so anomalous, and so devoid of effect on the mischief to be remedied, cannot have been within the legislative intent.

[189]*189The effect of .the act of 1897 remains to be considered. The 1st section of this act provides that “ All wholesale dealers, brewers, distillers, rectifiers, compounders, bottlers, storekeepers, or agents, having stores or offices within this commonwealth, dealing in intoxicating liquors, either spirituous, vinous, malt or brewed, shall pay for the use of the commonwealth, for each separate store, brewery, distillery, rectifying, compounding or bottling establishment or agency, an annual license fee,” etc. It is contended by the appellee that in thus requiring an annual license fee for “ each separate store, brewery,” etc., the act gives a right to as many separate breweries as the court may think proper to license.

Whether this language, viewing it only as here employed, is used to distinguish merely the separate classes of establishments to be licensed and the separate establishments of different applicants, or separate establishments of a single applicant, or both, does not, indeed, readily appear. A comparison, however, with previous enactments on the same subject, and with the same language used elsewhere in the same act, will assist in reaching a conclusion. The Act of April 10,1849, P. L. 570, sec. 31, providing for the licensing of distilleries and breweries, directed a classification on the basis of annual sales, and required “ all distillers and brewers to pay annually, for the use of the commonwealth, for their respective licenses,” the fees therein fixed. Through all modifications of the law on this subject, until 1887, this language remained unaltered, and during that period it was assumed, in practice, that it authorized but one license to an applicant. The Act of May 24,1887, P. L. 194, however, introduced a change of phraseology, which was followed in the acts of 1891 and 1897, and which, the appellee contends, authorizes more than one brewery license to the same applicant.

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Related

Pittsburg Brewing Company's License
16 Pa. Super. 215 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1901)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
12 Pa. Super. 176, 1899 Pa. Super. LEXIS 229, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pittsburg-brewing-companys-brewers-license-pasuperct-1899.