Henderson v. Grundy County Beer Committee

• Decision Date: 29 June 1940
• Citation: 141 S.W.2d 901,176 Tenn. 397
• Parties: HENDERSON v. GRUNDY COUNTY BEER COMMITTEE et al. SANDERS v. SAME (two cases). HARGIS et ux. v. SAME.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

141 S.W.2d 901

176 Tenn. 397

HENDERSON v. GRUNDY COUNTY BEER COMMITTEE et al.

SANDERS v. SAME (two cases).

HARGIS et ux. v. SAME.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

June 29, 1940

Error to Circuit Court, Grundy County; Alan S. Kelly, Judge.

Proceedings by the Grundy County Beer Committee and others against Paul Henderson, J. W. Sanders, Crawford Sanders, and Jasper Hargis and wife, respectively, to revoke retail dealers' beer permits issued to respondents, who filed applications for writs of certiorari and supersedeas. Judgments granting the writs, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court directed issuance of writs of certiorari and supersedeas on petitions of the beer committee's chairman and secretary. On respondents' motions to dismiss such petitions.

Motions denied, judgments reversed, and the beer committee declared authorized to proceed with hearings of petitions to revoke permits.

Thos M. Lockhart and H. B. Garthwaite, both of Tracy City, for plaintiffs.

J. D Mosby, of Nashville, and Jeff D. Fults, of Tracy City, for defendants.

EDWARD J. SMITH, Special Justice.

The question to be determined in each of these cases is whether the Beer Committee of Grundy County has jurisdiction to revoke for cause, after notice and hearing, retail dealers' beer permits, issued to the respondents.

On November 3, 1939, the Tennessee Brewers and Beer Distributors Committee, and eleven citizens and residents of Grundy County, filed petitions with the beer committee against the respondents, alleging in substance that retail dealers' beer permits previously had been issued to the respondents and that they had so conducted their places of business commonly called road houses, as to interfere with the public health, safety, and morals, and more particularly that they had habitually sold beer to minors, had persistently violated the bone dry law of the State, had employed girls of immoral character to act as waitresses, who solicited patrons for immoral purposes, and had used their places of business for the purposes of prostitution, and had caused many of the miners who worked in the vicinity of such places to spend their weekly wages in drunken rioting and revelry, and by virtue of the lax, loose, and immoral conditions prevailing at such places many difficulties had occurred, some of them a short time prior to the filing of the petitions, in which men had been seriously cut and wounded.

On the filing of the petitions, the beer committee served notice on each of the respondents that a hearing would be held on November 13, 1939, but prior to that date counsel for the respondents filed a motion to continue the hearing until a later date, and subsequently they filed motions to dismiss and pleas in abatement for causes which will be stated in the petitions for certiorari later filed in the court below.

The motions and pleas were overruled by the committee, and the respondents filed pleas of not guilty, and the causes were set for hearing on March 18, 1940.

On March 16, 1940, the respondents herein filed applications or petitions for certiorari and writs of supersedeas alleging in substance that the proceedings before the beer committee were in reality brought under Code, § 9324, et seq. for the abatement of an alleged nuisance, and that the beer committee had no jurisdiction to proceed and try any such cause of action, and further that the committee had no jurisdiction to revoke permits previously issued by it, except that any person making a false statement in said application shall forfeit his permit, and that as the petitions filed before the committee did not make such a charge, but were based on violations of the bone dry laws involved in the illegal sale of liquor, and the sale of beer to minors, contrary to the beer act, the committee had no jurisdiction to revoke the permits of the respondents in that the acts alleged in the petitions occurred after the issuance of the permits, and except for the one case above stated, permits issued by the beer committee of the county are irrevocable.

The court below ordered the writs of certiorari and supersedeas to issue as prayed, and they were served on the chairman and secretary of the beer committee on March 18, 1940, a short time before the hearings were scheduled to begin.

On March 30, 1939, the Chief Justice of this Court, on the application of the chairman and secretary of the beer committee, directed writs of certiorari and supersedeas to issue to the end that the holding of the...