People v. Griesbach
| Decision Date | 23 June 1904 |
| Citation | 71 N.E. 874,211 Ill. 35 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. GRIESBACH. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Branch Appellate Court, First District.
Quo warranto by the people, on the relation of the state's attorney of Cook county, against Fritz Griesbach. From a judgment for respondent, affirmed by the Branch Appellate Court (112 Ill. App. 192) relator appeals. Reversed.
Charles S Deneen, State's Atty.
(Church, McMurdy & Sherman, of counsel), for appellant.
Nicholas Michels, for appellee.
This was an information in the nature of quo warranto, filed by the state's attorney of Cook county against the appellee, in which it was alleged that the appellee has usurped and unlawfully holds and exercises the privilege and license of keeping a dramshop at and upon the premises known as No. 5014 Cottage Grove avenue, in that part of the city of Chicago which formerly constituted the village of Hyde Park. The appellee pleaded that he held and exercised the privilege to keep the dramshop at said premises by virtue of a license issued to him by the mayor of the city of Chicago in compliance with the laws of the state of Illinois and the ordinances of the city of Chicago and the ordinances of the former village of Hyde Park, and that, in order to become entitled to and obtain such license, he procured and presented to the mayor of the said city an application signed by the owners of a majority of the property (according to frontage) on both sides of the four streets surrounding the block in which the dramshop was to be and is kept, and also by a majority of the bona fide householders and persons and firms living in or doing business on each side of the street in the block upon which said dramshop has its main entrance, as required by the ordinances of the former village of Hyde Park, which ordinances remained in full force after the annexation of the village of Hyde Park to the city of Chicago, and still are in full force and effect. The plea made the application for the license a part thereof. The cause was, by stipulation of the parties, submitted to a jury for trial without further pleadings by either party, the stipulation providing that either party might prove any fact or raise any question of law which might be proved or raised under any other pleading which could properly have been presented in the cause.
It appeared upon the trial that it was necessary to a legal application for the license that the application therefor should bear the signatures of the owners of 2,252.52 feet of property having its frontage on one or the other of the four streets surrounding the block on which the dramshop was to be and is located, in accordance with the construction given the ordinance of the village of Hyde Park by this court in Harrison v. People, 195 Ill. 466, 63 N. E. 191. The application purported to contain the names of the owners of 2,347.13 feet of such frontage, being an apparent excess of 94.16 feet over the requisite amount. Of the frontage so appearing on the application, 250 feet thereof was owned by five tenants in common, four, only, of whom signed the application. The trial court ruled the signatures of these four tenants in common should be accepted as representing 200 feet of the frontage of 250 feet owned by the five tenants in common. Counsel for the people contend that the signatures of tenants in common cannot be accepted as representing a proportionate part of the entire frontage of the common property.
It is true, as argued, that tenants in common are seised of each and every part of the estate, and that one of such tenants has no power to convey the whole of the estate or the whole of any distinct part or portion of it, or to give a valid release for injuries done to it, and that one tenant in common cannot lawfully do any act that will work a permanent injury to the inheritance. But the argument that as a license to keep a dramshop cannot, under the ordinance in question, be lawfully granted except upon the application and consent of a majority of the property owners, etc., it must be considered by the courts that the keeping of a dramshop in the block is detrimental and injurious to the property abutting on the streets which surround the block, and that for that reason a tenant in common cannot be allowed to consent to that which must, as a matter of law, be considered to be injurious and detrimental to the common property, is not sound. The statutes provide for the presentation of petitions for the construction of local improvements by special taxation or special assessments, for the opening of highways, the creation of drainage districts, and of towns under township organization, and perhaps for other objects and purposes. Petitions are not required in such cases for the reason that the objects to be attainedby the petition are to be deemed prejudicial or injurious in their nature, and therefore only to be granted in case those, or a portion of those, who will be prejudicially affected thereby shall signify their consent by way of a petition. Whether such objects are desirable and beneficial or prejudicial and detrimental are questions upon which the minds of those interested do not always agree, and the purpose of the provisions for petitions is to discover and give effect to the views and wishes of the greater number of those who are interested in the subject-matter of the petition. The same is true as to the application for license to keep dramshops, and courts will not declare, as matter of law, that dramshops are prejudicial and injurious to real estate in the vicinity because the ordinance in question prohibits the issuing of licenses to keep such shops except upon the application of a majority of the owners of such real estate. The signing of such a petition by a tenant in common cannot be declared, as a matter of law, to be detrimental or injurious to the estate of himself and his co-tenants. Whether the establishment of a dramshop in the block surrounded by the streets upon which the common property abuts is injurious or beneficial to the property is a question upon which each tenant in common has the right to judge for himself, and we think each of such tenants in common has the right to sign such a petition as the representative of his proportionate interest in the property according to the frontage thereof. If this were not true, any one tenant in common, no matter how small his interest, would be given by law the power to determine for his cotenants, no matter how many there might be of them, or how much greater their interests, whether the...
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...as in the Hoyt case, or by some other procedure, cf. Theurer v. People ex rel. Deneen, 221 Ill. 296, 71 N.E. 997; People v. Griesbach, 211 Ill. 35, 71 N.E. 874; Swarth v. People ex rel. Paxton, 109 Ill. 621, does not alter the fact that no such issue was presented or decided in this Interve......
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Hoyt v. McLaughlin
...before this court. People v. Harrison, 185 Ill. 307, 56 N. E. 1120;Harrison v. People, 195 Ill. 466, 63 N. E. 191;People v. Griesbach, 211 Ill. 35, 71 N. E. 874;Theurer v. People, 211 Ill. 296, 71 N. E. 997;People v. Heidelberg Garden Co., 233 Ill. 290, 84 N. E. 230. [3] The bill alleges th......
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Theurer v. People ex rel. Deneen
...application for the issuance of a dramshop license, as provided by said ordinances, can be purchased and be valid. In People v. Griesbach, 211 Ill. 35, 71 N. E. 874, the question presented for consideration was the validity of the signature of a minor to an application for a dramshop licens......