Wishnow v. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission

757 S.W.2d 404, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 1475, 1988 WL 63235
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJune 23, 1988
DocketB14-87-00893-CV
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 757 S.W.2d 404 (Wishnow v. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wishnow v. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, 757 S.W.2d 404, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 1475, 1988 WL 63235 (Tex. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinions

OPINION

PAUL PRESSLER, Justice.

This is an appeal from an order of the district court affirming the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission’s sixty day suspension of appellant’s mixed beverage and late hours permits. We affirm.

Appellant’s permits were suspended following a hearing before the TABC in which the hearing examiner determined that appellant, through his patrons and employees, had violated Tbx.Alco.Bev.Code §§ 11.-61(b)(7) and 104.01(2) as well as Tex. Penal Code §§ 21.01, 21.07, 21.08, and § 4.03(a) and § 4.04(a) of the Controlled Substances Act. The bases for the hearing examiner’s fact findings were events which occurred during several visits to Wish’s Club in the summer of 1986 by TABC undercover agents. These events included incidents of indecent exposure by several patrons of the club and the possession, sale and delivery of cocaine to an agent by a club employee. In challenging the order of the court, appellant raises seventeen points of error.

Points of error one through three allege that the provisions of the Alcoholic Beverage Code upon which the suspension is based are unconstitutionally vague and vio-lative of due process because, when measured by common understanding and practices, they fail to give appellant fair notice of the conduct which they prohibit.

When addressing a challenge to the constitutionality of a statute, we must presume that the statute is valid and that the legislature did not act arbitrarily in enacting it. Robinson v. Hill, 507 S.W.2d 521, 524 (Tex.1974). The burden is on the party challenging the statute to establish its unconstitutionality. Id.

In Texas Liquor Control Board v. The Attic Club, Inc., 457 S.W.2d 41 (Tex.1970, Dism. 400 U.S. 986, 91 S.Ct. 459, 27 L.Ed.2d 435), the Supreme Court addressed such a challenge to Rule and Regulation No. 56, promulgated by the Texas Liquor Control Board, under authority of Art 666-1 et seq. of the Texas Penal Code, the legislative predecessor of the statutes under attack in the instant case. In holding that the rule was not unconstitutional for vagueness, the court said, “Due process is violated only when a required course of conduct is stated in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must guess at what is required ... or, when there is a substantial risk of miscalculation by those whose acts are subjected to regulation.” Id. at 45. Furthermore, in the field of regulatory statutes governing business activity, greater leeway is allowed in applying the fair notice test. Papackristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 162, 92 S.Ct. 839, 843, 31 L.Ed.2d 110 (1972).

The provisions of the Alcoholic Beverage Code attacked by appellant on grounds of vagueness read as follows:

§ 11.61
(b) The commission or administrator may suspend for not more than 60 days or cancel an original or renewal permit if it is found, after notice and hearing, that any of the following is true:
[407]*407(7) the place or manner in which the permittee conducts his business warrants the cancellation or suspension of the permit based on the general welfare, health, peace, morals, and safety of the people and on the public sense of decency;
§ 104.01
No person authorized to sell beer at retail, nor his agent, servant, or employee, may engage in or permit conduct on the premises of the retailer which is lewd, immoral, or offensive to public decency, including, but not limited to, any of the following acts:
(2) the exposure of person or permitting a person to expose his person;

The question for this court is whether these statutes fail to give sufficient notice of the conduct which is proscribed. Appellant relies on Pennington v. Singleton, 606 S.W.2d 682 (Tex.1980) for the proposition that the Code fails to define key words and phrases, particularly “lewd, immoral, exposure of person, and offensive to public decency,” sufficiently to convey definite warning. We note, however, that Pennington, a Deceptive Trade Practices case concerning the treble damages portion of that Act, insofar as it may apply to our case, holds that terms which are not defined “must be given their ordinary meanings.” 606 S.W.2d at 687. The case goes on to point out that while Pennington based his challenge on the line of decisions holding that penal statutes must give fair notice of the conduct they prohibit,

in the field of regulatory statutes governing business activity, greater leeway is allowed in applying the fair notice test. (Citing Papackristou, supra.) ... Most statutes must deal with untold and unforeseen variations in factual situations, and the practical necessities of discharging the business of government inevitably limit the specificity with which legislators can spell out prohibitions. Consequently, no more than a reasonable degree of certainty can be demanded. Statutes are not automatically invalidated as vague simply because difficulty is found in determining whether certain marginal offenses fall within their language. (Citation.) The statute should ‘convey sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and practices.’ (Citation.) 606 S.W.2d at 689.

Appellant contends that because the Commission gives him the opportunity to pay a monetary penalty in lieu of suspension, Tex.Alco.Bev.Code § 11.64(a), the Code provision involved is actually penal in nature and thus subject to the certainty requirements of criminal statutes. We do not agree. First, the Supreme Court in Pennington, supra, rejected the argument that a provision for a civil penalty must be judged by the standards applied to criminal laws. 606 S.W.2d at 688, 689. Secondly, we note that the “fine” complained of on these grounds in the instant case is not imposed by the State but is merely offered as an alternative to suspension of one’s permits under the Alcoholic Beverage Code. Appellant has the option of paying the fine to avoid suspension. He is not required to do so. Thirdly, while § 104.01 of the Code can be applied in either a civil proceeding or a criminal prosecution, in appellant’s case, both this provision and § 11.61 were applied in an administrative proceeding and appellant faced no criminal charges. Therefore, it is appropriate that we test the challenged statutes by those standards applied to civil laws.

Finally, in Lowe v. Texas Liquor Control Board, 255 S.W.2d 252, (Tex.Civ.App.-Amarillo 1952, no writ), a case more factually on point with the case before us, appellant’s package store permit was cancelled for a violation of Art. 666-12(6) of the Penal Code. The language of this article is almost identical to that of § 11.61(b)(7) at issue in our case, and Lowe attacked that language on the same grounds asserted here by Wishnow. In affirming the cancellation, the appellate court first pointed out that

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Wishnow v. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission
757 S.W.2d 404 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1988)

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757 S.W.2d 404, 1988 Tex. App. LEXIS 1475, 1988 WL 63235, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wishnow-v-texas-alcoholic-beverage-commission-texapp-1988.