Sales Co v. Grosscup
| Decision Date | 18 May 1936 |
| Docket Number | No. 745,PREMIER-PABST,745 |
| Parties | SALES CO. v. GROSSCUP et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Messrs. M. J. Donnelly and C. J. Lynch, Jr., both of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and J. Wesley McWilliams, of Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.
Premier-Pabst Sales Company, a Delaware corporation, is a distributor of beer made in Illinois and Wisconsin. Having secured a license issued under a statute of Pennsylvania enacted and amended in 1933 (Act May 3, 1933, P.L. 252, Act Dec. 20, 1933, Sp.Sess., P.L. 75), it engaged in business there. That statute was again amended by Act No. 398, approved July 18, 1935 (47 P.S.Pa. § 84 et seq.), which changed the licensing law so as to discriminate between distributors who sold beer made within the state and those who sold imported beer. The annual license fee of the former was made § 400, and the penalty of the bond required of them was set at $1,000; the license fee of the latter was made $900, and the penalty of the bond to be given by them was set at $2,000.
The company did not apply for a license under the 1935 act. Instead, it filed, in the federal court for Eastern Pennsylvania, this suit against the Liquor Control Board and other state officials. Claiming that the act violated the commerce clause and the equal protection clause of the Federal Constitution ), the bill prayed for a judgment declaring the act void and for an injunction restraining its enforcement. The case was heard before three judges upon application for a preliminary injunction. The facts were stipulated; and it was agreed that the hearing should be deemed also a final hearing upon the application for a permanent injunction. The court denied the injunctions and dismissed the bill as wanting in equity, because the discrimination complained of was authorized by the Twenty-First Amendment. 12 F.Supp. 970. An appeal was allowed.
We have no occasion to consider the constitutional question, because it appears that the plaintiff is without standing to present it. One who would strike down a state statute as obnoxious to the Federal Constitution must show that the alleged unconstitutional feature injures him. Heald v. District of Columbia, 259 U.S. 114, 123, 42 S.Ct. 434, 66 L.Ed. 852. Under the act of 1935, no one may sell beer in Pennsylvania unless duly licensed; and no license may issue to a corporation unless all its officers and directors, and 51 per cent. of...
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