Modern Cigarette, Inc. v. Orange

• Decision Date: 08 May 2001
• Docket Number: (SC 16259)
• Citation: 774 A.2d 969,256 Conn. 105
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: MODERN CIGARETTE, INC. v. TOWN OF ORANGE ET AL.

256 Conn. 105

774 A.2d 969

MODERN CIGARETTE, INC. v. TOWN OF ORANGE ET AL.

(SC 16259)

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 27, 2000.

Officially released May 8, 2001.

McDonald, C.J., and Borden, Norcott, Katz, Palmer, Sullivan and Vertefeuille, Js.¹ Richard Blumenthal, attorney general, with whom were Eliot D. Prescott, assistant attorney general, and Brian M. Stone, for the appellants (defendants and intervening defendant).

Anthony S. Bonadies, for the appellee (plaintiff).

Opinion

KATZ, J.

The sole issue in this appeal is whether an ordinance adopted by the named defendant, the town of Orange (town), banning all cigarette vending machines within its borders (ordinance) is preempted by General Statutes § 12-289a.² The trial court concluded that state law preempted the ordinance. Accordingly, the trial court declared the ordinance invalid and enjoined the town from enforcing it. Because we determine that § 12-289a does not prohibit the town, acting within its powers to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens, from banning all cigarette vending machines within its borders, we reverse the judgment of the trial court.

The record discloses the following facts as stipulated to by the parties, and as found by the trial court. On May 13, 1998, the town adopted the ordinance prohibiting cigarette vending machines within its borders.³ In particular the ordinance provides that "[n]o person shall dispense or cause to be dispense[d] cigarettes, tobacco or smokeless tobacco products from vending machines at any location within the Town ...." The ordinance contains a number of factual determinations that were reported, essentially, as legislative findings. Specifically, the ordinance reported that local school officials had noticed a significant rise in teenage smoking, and further recounted that "[c]urrent laws and regulations have proved ineffective and inadequate in preventing the illegal purchase of cigarettes by children under the age of [eighteen] years, particularly from cigarette vending machines...."

Prior to the adoption of the ordinance, the plaintiff, Modern Cigarette, Inc., a duly licensed distributor of tobacco products as defined by General Statutes § 12-285 (4),⁴ which owns and operates approximately 100 cigarette vending machines statewide, had been operating one cigarette vending machine within the town. Following the adoption of the ordinance, the plaintiff removed the vending machine from service and brought this action against the town and its selectpersons, seeking, inter alia, a declaration that the town's ordinance was invalid, and an injunction prohibiting the town from enforcing it. The plaintiff claimed that the ordinance was invalid because it: (1) was preempted by state law; (2) constituted a taking without just compensation; and (3) violated the plaintiffs substantive due process rights. The plaintiff also claimed that the state's delegation of power to municipalities to ban cigarette vending machines was unconstitutionally vague. The trial court, Pittman, J., granted a motion to intervene by the state.⁵

In addition to the parties' written stipulation regarding most of the factual issues in the case,⁶ the trial court found the following facts based on "certain additional and largely uncontroverted evidence."⁷ The trial court determined that both the state and the town have a legitimate interest in promoting the health, safety and welfare of its citizens through the regulation of tobacco products and in preventing youth access to cigarettes. See, e.g., General Statutes §§ 53-344 and 53-344a.⁸ Despite these statutes prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors, the trial court noted that Connecticut youth, including minors in the town, had experienced "little difficulty in making illegal purchases of tobacco products from [cigarette vending] machines."

In reaching this conclusion, the court recognized a 1988 survey commissioned by the state department of mental health and addiction services, which, the court said, "demonstrated that minors were successful in their efforts to purchase cigarettes from a vending machine in six out of every ten attempts." Indeed, the survey indicated that "a minor is twice as likely to be able to purchase cigarettes from a vending machine as from a convenience store or other over-the-counter outlet." According to the survey, minors "have even succeeded in illegally purchasing cigarettes from restricted vending machines, which are designed to prevent the sale of tobacco to minors by requiring a face-to-face transaction with the operator of the machine." The trial court noted the fact that cigarette vending machines are essentially age-blind and, therefore, remain a significant source of tobacco products for minors, despite the existence of state laws prohibiting or limiting their placement in areas accessible to minors. Indeed, the court noted, "[t]he ordinance in question was a product of the [town's] concern, based, inter alia, on the data previously mentioned, that teenage smoking is a public health hazard and that vending machines are a prime source of cigarettes for those youths who wish to smoke them." The trial court acknowledged that the town's purpose of preventing youth access to tobacco was well served by the ordinance, which was both rationally and reasonably related to that purpose.

Despite its findings regarding youth access to cigarettes, the trial court concluded that § 12-289a (h) preempts the ordinance, and therefore, the court declared the ordinance invalid. Thereafter, the plaintiff withdrew its claims for damages, and, accordingly, the trial court rendered judgment for the plaintiff. The defendants appealed to the Appellate Court and, pursuant to Practice Book § 65-2 and General Statutes § 51-199 (c), we transferred the appeal to this court.

I

Before we determine the merits of the plaintiffs claims, we begin with a discussion of certain controlling legal principles. First, it is undisputed that "[t]he challenged ordinance is an exercise of the police power conferred upon the town by statute. There is no doubt that the town has a right to regulate a business, pursuant to its police power, in the interest of protecting the public safety or the welfare of its inhabitants.... Any such regulation, however, must be reasonably calculated to achieve that purpose; it must have a rational relationship to its objective.... The State may regulate any business or the use of any property in the interest of the public welfare or the public convenience, provided it is done reasonably.... The limit of the exercise of the police power is necessarily flexible, because it has to be considered in the light of the times and the prevailing conditions.... Whether the times and conditions require legislative regulation, as well as the degree of that regulation, is exclusively a matter for the judgment of the legislative body .... Courts can interfere only in those extreme cases where the action taken is unreasonable, discriminatory or arbitrary.... Every intendment is to be made in favor of the validity of [an] ordinance and it is the duty of the court to sustain the ordinance unless its invalidity is established beyond a reasonable doubt.... [T]he court presumes validity and sustains the legislation unless it clearly violates constitutional principles.... If there is a reasonable ground for upholding it, courts assume that the legislative body intended to place it upon that ground and was not motivated by some improper purpose.... This is especially true where the apparent intent of the enactment is to serve some phase of the public welfare." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Blue Sky Bar, Inc. v. Stratford, 203 Conn. 14, 22-23, 523 A.2d 467 (1987). Second, in determining whether a local ordinance is preempted by a state statute, we must consider whether the legislature has demonstrated an intent to occupy the entire field of regulation on the matter or whether the local ordinance irreconcilably conflicts with the statute. In this case, we examine the statute to assess whether there is a conflict.

"Whether an ordinance conflicts with a statute or statutes can only be determined by reviewing the policy and purposes behind the statute and measuring the degree to which the ordinance frustrates the achievement of the state's objectives.... Helicopter Associates, Inc. v. Stamford, 201 Conn. 700, 705, 519 A.2d 49 (1986); Shelton v. Commissioner of Environmental Protection, 193 Conn. 506, 517, 479 A.2d 208 (1984); Dwyer v. Farrell, 193 Conn. 7, 12-14, 475 A.2d 257 (1984)." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Bauer v. Waste Management of Connecticut, Inc., 234 Conn. 221, 232, 662 A.2d 1179 (1995). Therefore, "[t]hat a matter is of concurrent state and local concern is no impediment to the exercise of authority by a municipality through the enactment of an ordinance, so long as there is no conflict with the state legislation. See State v. Gordon, 143 Conn. 698, 706, 125 A.2d 477 (1956); City of Junction City v. Lee, 216 Kan. 495, 498-99, 532 P.2d 1292 (1975). Where the state legislature has delegated to local government the right to deal with a particular field of regulation, the fact that a statute also regulates the same subject in less than full fashion does not, ipso facto, deprive the local government of the power to act in a more comprehensive, but not inconsistent, manner. See Connecticut Theatrical Corporation v. New Britain, 147 Conn. 546, 553, 163 A.2d 548 (1960); State v. Gordon, supra, 706; see also Page v. Welfare Commissioner, [170 Conn. 258, 266, 365 A.2d 1118 (1976)]." Aaron v. Conservation Commission, 183 Conn. 532, 543, 441 A.2d 30 (1981). Therefore, merely because a local ordinance, enacted pursuant to the municipality's police power, provides higher standards than a statute on the same subject does not render it necessarily inconsistent with the state law. Whether a conflict...