Commonwealth v. Intoxicating Liquors
| Decision Date | 05 January 1899 |
| Citation | 172 Mass. 311,52 N.E. 389 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. INTOXICATING LIQUORS. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
R.W. Nutter, for claimant.
R.O Harris, Dist. Atty., for the Commonwealth.
Subject to the power of congress over foreign and interstate commerce, the right of a state to regulate, by reasonable laws, the manufacture, sale, or transportation of spirituous or intoxicating liquors within its own territorial limits, is established by numerous decisions, both of state and national courts. Such a law is not inconsistent either with the constitution of our state or that of the United States. It comes well within the authority called the "police power," subject to which, in various ways, all private property is held, and it is unnecessary to restate here the principles upon which it rests. Com v. Blackington, 24 Pick. 352; Com. v. Williams, 6 Gray, 1; Com. v. Kendall, 12 Cush. 414; Com. v. Clapp, 5 Gray, 97; Com. v. Bennett, 108 Mass. 27; Com. v. Ducey, 126 Mass. 269; Com. v. Intoxicating Liquors, 115 Mass. 153; Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 97 U.S. 25; License Cases, 5 How. 504; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100, 10 Sup.Ct. 681; Carstairs v. O'Donnell, 154 Mass. 357, 28 N.E. 271; Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 8 Sup.Ct. 273, and cases therein cited.
And we do not see that St.1897, c. 271, goes beyond the fair and reasonable exercise of that right. The first section provides that "all spirituous or intoxicating liquors to be transported for delivery to or in a city or town where licenses of the first five classes have not been granted, when to be transported for hire or reward, shall be delivered by the seller or consignor to a railroad corporation or to a person or corporation regularly and lawfully conducting a general express business, in vessels or packages plainly and legibly marked on the outside with the name and address by street and number, if there be such of the seller or consignor and of the purchaser or consignee, and with the kind and amount of liquor therein contained." It then provides that delivery of any part of such liquors "to any person other than the owner or consignee whose name is marked by the seller or consignor on said vessels or packages, or at any other place than thereon marked, shall be deemed to be a sale by any person making such delivery to such person in the place where such delivery is made." Section 2 provides that the carrier shall keep a certain detailed record of the reception and delivery of such liquors. Section 3 provides that all packages containing intoxicating liquors addressed contrary to the provisions of this act, or to a fictitious or unknown person, or to a person who cannot be found, shall be declared forfeited to the commonwealth. The act was manifestly intended to meet some difficulties which had been encountered by the government in the prosecution of common carriers for illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors, and to make it more difficult for the guilty to escape detection when setting up the fraudulent defense that the liquors found in the possession of the carrier were for delivery by him as such to some person. It is only one of the many statutes which indicate that the policy of the commonwealth is to require that the traffic in liquors in this state shall be open, so that every step shall be exposed to the scrutiny of the authorities, and that the violation of the law may be the more easily detected. Examples of this policy are to be found in the third section of chapter 100 of the Public Statutes, requiring a druggist to keep a record of his sales, which record shall be at all times open to the inspection of certain public officers; in the ninth section, which provides that the license shall be displayed upon the premises in a conspicuous position; in the twelfth section, which provides that "no *** licensee shall place or maintain, or permit to be placed or maintained, upon any premises used by him for the sale of spirituous or intoxicating liquor under the provisions of his license, any screen, blind, shutter, curtain, partition, or painted, ground, or stained glass window, or any other obstruction, or shall expose in any window upon said premises any bottle, cask, or other vessel containing, or purporting to contain, intoxicating liquor, in such a way as to interfere with a view of the business conducted upon the premises"; and in the fifteenth section, which provides that certain public officers may enter upon the licensed premises to see how the business is conducted, and may take samples of the liquor for examination and analysis. Nor is there any ground for saying that the forfeiture is to be regarded as in the nature of an excessive or unusual punishment. The first seven request, therefore, were rightly refused.
The eighth request concerns more particularly the judicial proceedings for enforcing the forfeiture. The statute named no way of enforcing such forfeiture, and so the only way was through the provisions of Pub.St.c. 194, the proceedings under which are carried on upon the civil side of the court. In this state of the law, St.1897, c. 487, was passed, the second section of which is as follows: "The provisions of chapter one hundred of the Public Statutes relating to the seizure and forfeiture of intoxicating liquors shall apply to the provisions of chapter...
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