Pittsburg Brewing Company's Brewer's License
Pittsburg Brewing Company's Brewer's License
Opinion of the Court
The six judges who heard this appeal being equally divided in opinion the order is affirmed.
Opinion' by
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
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,
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.
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. Instead of following the act of 1849, in requiring all brewers, distillers, etc., to “ pay for their respective licenses ” the specified fees, the later acts provide that they shall pay an annual license fee “ for each separate store, brewery,” etc. It is not to be presumed that this change was made unadvisedly, or without purpose; and its only conceivable purpose is to express the legislative intent that as many separate licenses may be granted to any applicant as to the court may seem proper. But whatever meaning may be attributed to this language as it appears in the first
Thus our conclusion is (1) that an interest in a brewery is not within the purview of the clauses of the petition required by the act of 1891 relative to other places where liquors “ are •sold or kept for sale; ” (2) that however these clauses may be •construed, the act of 1897 authorizes the grant of more than one brewery license to the same person by the court of quarter .sessions, and to this extent repeals them if they are inconsistent with this provision of the latter act.
The contention that the act of 1897 takes away the jurisdicr -tion of the quarter sessions in the granting of brewery licenses, .and vests it wholly in the state treasurer, is without foundation. The acts of 1887 and 1891 expressly declare that “licenses .shall be granted only by the court of quarter sessions of the proper county.” This jurisdiction can be taken away only by •express terms or necessary implication. There is nothing in the terms of the act of 1897, or in any implication arising from them, which can be construed as taking it away. The two acts differ materially as to procedure, and radically as to the scope of the license to be granted. The authority given the state treasurer, by the act of 1897, to issue a qualified license, cannot be viewed as a repeal of the act of 1891 as to brewers; it operates rathef in the nature of a proviso, and leaves unaffected the jurisdiction given to the quarter sessions by the act of 1891.
The legislature having authorized the incorporation of the applicant in this case, with the right to engage in the business <of brewing, and to purchase and hold property for that purpose, its business methods are beyond our consideration. While a business of limited scope is authorized by the state treasurer’s license, it is better for the community that the granting of
Judgment affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting:
The Act of June 9, 1891, P. L. 257, prescribes just what is required of an applicant for a brewer’s license to authorize the court of quarter sessions to grant it, and no subsequent legislation has relieved the applicant of any of these statutory requirements. It is entitled “ An act to restrain and regulate the sale of vinous and spirituous, malt and brewed liquors or any admixtures thereof by wholesale,” and it is not material whether the applicant is an individual, a copartnership or a corporation. The proceeding is begun by and founded upon a petition which,, by section 11 of the act, must be verified by the affidavit of the applicant, and if any false statement is wilfully made in any part of said petition the applicant shall be deemed guilty of the crime of perjury, and upon indictment and conviction shall be subject to its penalties. The sixth and seventh clauses of section 4 present an absolute bar to the granting of more than one brewer’s license to a single person in one county by the court of quarter sessions, and when one such license has been granted by the court to one person, a partnership or a corporation, the authority of the court is fully expended. For it is not to be supposed that the legislature intended to authorize the court to grant him an additional license for another place, when to obtain it he must swear to.a falsehood. The express mention of the instances in which interest in the profits or business con
It is apparent that the act of 1891 was considered when the two acts of 1897 were framed, and as applications for brewers’ licenses could be filed under the act of 1891 by the same applicant for different breweries, in several counties of the commonwealth, it was perfectly proper to say that the applicant should pay a certain annual license fee “for each separate brewery.”
These words in the act of 1891 can be given effect without annulling or even qualifying the explicit provisions of the sixth and seventh clauses of section 4.
The several provisions indicate that the three acts were intended to be integral parts of a system, to be so administered, and that the acts of 1897 were not intended to repeal any of the jurisdictional provisions of the former law of 1891. Granting for the sake of the argument that the legislature intended by the latter act to amend the earlier act so as to permit a brewer having, for example, two breweries in the same county to take out a state treasurer’s license for one and to apply to the court of quarter sessions for a license for the other, it does not necessarily nor logically follow that the restrictions of the act of 1891 have been wholly removed. Taking this view, but without deciding the point, the acts read as a connected whole are reasonably to be construed to mean that when an applicant for a general brewer’s license under the act of 1891 held or was entitled to a state treasurer’s limited license under the act of June 21, 1897, it therefore became necessary to modify the statements in the petition under the earlier act, so as to ex
I do not think there is such a positive repugnancy between these acts as to justify us in holding that the requirements of the sixth, seventh and eleventh clauses of the fourth section of the act of 1891 are repealed by implication by the acts of 1897; such a conclusion is never favored, and is adopted when the intention to repeal is clearly manifest and in extreme cases only. This is not such a case.
I am authorized to say that Judges Rice and Beeber con cur in the foregoing opinion.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.