Guastamachio v. Brennan
| Decision Date | 05 December 1941 |
| Citation | 128 Conn. 356,23 A.2d 140 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | GUASTAMACHIO v. BRENNAN et al. |
Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; O'Sullivan, Judge.
Proceeding by Matthew Guastamachio against E. Gaynor Brennan and others upon appeal from the action of the Liquor Control Commission in revoking a restaurant liquor permit. From a judgment of dismissal, plaintiff appeals.
No error.
Argued before MALTBIE, C. J, and AVERY, BROWN, JENNINGS, and ELLS, JJ.
John W. Joy, of Hartford (Jacob Schwolsky, of Hartford, on the brief), for appellant (plaintiff).
Leo V. Gaffney, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Francis A. Pallotti, Atty. Gen, on the brief), for appellee (defendant).
The facts material upon this appeal are not in dispute. On November 14, 1940, the plaintiff was the owner of a restaurant liquor permit for certain premises in East Hartford. On that evening, the plaintiff being in a hospital, Charles Lang was the substitute permittee in charge, and pursuant to prior arrangement a bachelor dinner was served in the banquet hall over the restaurant. An inside stairway from the restaurant, and also an outside stairway, afforded access to this hall. Lang was present in the hall during the serving of the dinner, after which he went downstairs, where he remained attending to business at the bar. Subsequently, unknown to him, five girls entered the hall upstairs and there engaged in an immoral performance in the presence of the men attending the dinner, until interrupted by the state police who arrested the performers and Lang. He was later discharged. It did not appear that either the plaintiff or Lang knew or had reason to believe that such a performance was contemplated or that it was in fact taking place until after it had been stopped by the police. The liquor control commission found the plaintiff permittee and the substitute permittee unsuitable persons by reason of violation of § 9 of its regulations, in permitting immoral activities on the permit premises and in allowing the premises to be conducted in such manner as to become a nuisance, and suspended the permit for eight weeks and until certain structural changes had been made. The present appeal is from the dismissal by the Superior Court of the plaintiff's appeal from that order.
On November 14, 1940, § 9 read: This was adopted by the liquor control commission pursuant to General Statutes, Cum.Sup.1935, § 1019c, empowering it "to make all needful rules and regulations" for the enforcement of the Liquor Control Act, and by virtue of § 1020c had "the same force and effect as law." The plaintiff makes no claim that the regulation is invalid but relies solely upon the court's claimed error in holding that the defendants did not act arbitrarily, unreasonably, or illegally in finding the permittee and substitute permittee unsuitable persons because upon the facts above stated they had violated this section by permitting immoral activities on the premises. The question for determination, therefore, phrasing it in terms most favorable to the plaintiff, is whether the fact that this immoral performance was given as stated upon the permit premises can be reasonably construed ipso facto to have constituted a violation of § 9, in the absence of either actual knowledge or of negligence in supervision by the permittee or substitute permittee.
The plaintiff's principal contention is that the words "permit or suffer" in the regulation in themselves imply that the permittee's conduct, to amount to a violation, must be done knowingly. Had the word "permit" been used by itself there would be force to this contention, for its primary meaning involves the idea of affirmative consent, necessarily involving knowledge. 48 C.J. 924, § 2; Webster's New International Dictionary, 2d...
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