Purity Extract & Tonic Co. v. Lynch

• Decision Date: 16 October 1911
• Docket Number: 15179
• Citation: 56 So. 316,100 Miss. 650
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: PURITY EXTRACT AND TONIC COMPANY v. C. C. LYNCH

56 So. 316

100 Miss. 650

PURITY EXTRACT AND TONIC COMPANY v. C. C. LYNCH

No. 15179

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 16, 1911

APPEAL from the circuit court of Hinds county, HON. W. A. HENRY Judge.

Suit by the Purity Extract and Tonic Company against C. C. Lynch. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Affirmed.

Green &amp Green, for appellant, filed an elaborate brief contending:

First. That Poinsetta does not come within prohibition statutes of the state as defined by the decisions of this court.

Second. That if so, said statutes when prohibiting the the sale of liquids, neither distilled, fermented or otherwise intoxicating, are void under the commerce clause of the federal Constitution when said liquids are offered for sale in original packages.

Third. That said statutes in so far as they prohibit the sale of Poinsetta fall under the condemnation of those sections of the federal Constitution prohibiting states from depriving any person of liberty or property without due process of law or denying to any person the equal protection of the law. Citing: Sedgwick on Statutory and Constitutional Law, 482; 3 Serg. and Rawl., 63, 73; Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 447; Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, 125 U.S. 465; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100; In re Rahrer, 140 U.S. 35; Brennan v. Titusville, 153 U.S. 289; Scott v. Donald, 165 U.S. 95; Vance v. Vandercock, 170 U.S. 441; Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U.S. 411; Schollenberger v. Pennsylvania, 171. U.S. 1; Telegraph Co. v. Philadelphia, 190 U.S. 162; American Express Co. v. Iowa, 196 U.S. 133; Brewing Co. v. Crenshaw, 198 U.S. 21; Cook v. Marshall County, 196 U.S. 261; Foppiano v. Speed, 199 U.S. 504; South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 461; Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U.S. 508; Express Co. v. Kentucky, 214 U.S. 218; 17 Am. and Eng. Ency. Law, p. 197; Intoxicating liquor is defined. Kelly v. Connor, 122 Tenn. (1909) 373; Vance v. Company, 170 U.S. 452, 42 L.Ed. 1100; State v. Eighteen Casks of Beer, 104 P. 1095; Delameter v. South Dakota, 205 U.S. 93, 51 L.Ed. 724; New Orleans Gas Light Co. v. Louisiana Light & H. P. & Mfg. Co., 115 U.S. 650, 29 L.Ed. 516, 6 S.Ct. 252; Wabash, St. L. & P. R. Co. v. Illinois, 118 U.S. 557, 30 L.Ed. 244, 1 Inter. Com. Rep. 31, 7 S.Ct. 4; Atlantic Coast Line R. R. Co. v. Wharton, 207 U.S. 328, 334, 52 L.Ed. 230, 234, 28 S.Ct. 121, 123; Adams Exp Co. v. Kentucky, 206 U.S. 129, 125, 51 L.Ed. 987, 991, 27 S.Ct. 606, 607; Robins v. Taxing District, 120 U.S. 489, 497, 30 L.Ed. 694, 697, 1 Inters. Com. Rep. 45, 7 S.Ct. 592; Caldwell v. North Carolina, 187 U.S. 622, 47 L.Ed. 336, 23 S.Ct. 229; Austin v. Tennessee, 179 U.S. 343, 45 L.Ed. 224, 21 S.Ct. 132; May v. New Orleans, 178 U.S. 496, 44 L.Ed. 1165, 20 S.Ct. 976; and Cook v. Marshall County, 196 U.S. 261, 49 L.Ed. 471, 25 S.Ct. 233.

Jas. R. McDowell, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.

I contend that the fact that Poinsetta is sold as a beverage, and contains malt (5.73 per cent), makes it a malt liquor within the meaning of our statute prohibiting the sale of "vinous, alcoholic, malt, intoxicating, or spirituous liquors, or intoxicating bitters, or other drinks, which if drunk to excess, will produce intoxication." This statute provision has been part of our law for many years, and is now in force. See section 1746, Code of 1906, as amended by chapter 115, Laws of 1908.

The record shows that Poinsetta is not intoxicating, and is not deleterious to health and morals, and the processes of its manufacture to be sanitary, and that in its manufacture the malt is extracted from hops, or other cereals, in such a way that no alcohol is formed. The first question presented, therefore, for discussion, is whether Poinsetta is a malt liquor within the meaning of our statute. I take the position that any beverage containing an appreciable quantity of malt, when sold and consumed as a beverage, whether intoxicating or not, is a malt liquor. The fact that the statute prohibits the sale of malt liquor is sufficient, without regard to the intoxicating properties of such liquor. Our court has so held in a number of case which I will discuss.

In the case of Reyfelt v. State, 73 Miss. 415, the court held that home-made wine, whether intoxicating or not, could not be sold because it was a vinous liquor and such liquor was clearly within the condemnation of the statute.

The Alabama court has held in the case of Marks v. State, 48 So. 864, that when "The prohibition statute names, designates, or enumerates the kinds, classes, or species of beverages against which its provisions are directed, then there is no room for further inquiry into the scope of such statute." In the case at bar, it is admitted that it is a beverage containing malt, and it makes no difference whether it is alcoholic or intoxicating. Our own court has followed the Marks case in the case of Edwards v. Gulfport, 49 So. 620. In this last named case, speaking through Chief Justice Whitfield, the court said that a conviction was proper because the liquor was shown to be both alcoholic and a malt liquor The court would undoubtedly have sustained a conviction if the liquor was shown to be either an alcoholic or a malt liquor. Since, the court adopted a construction placed upon a similar statute by the Alabama court, where that court held that the various named liquors--vinous, alcoholic, spirituous or malt--were not qualified by the words, "or other drinks, which if drunk to excess, will produce intoxication."

Since that decision, our court has passed upon the question again in the famous "Near Beer" cases (Fuller v. City of Jackson, 52 So. 873). The opinion of Chief Justice Mayes in response to the suggestion of error is the law on this subject, so I shall take occasion to quote frequently from this opinion. I quote first from page 876, second column, as follows: "The liquors expressly named which the law prohibits being sold are 'vinous, alcoholic, malt, or spirituous liquors, or intoxicating bitters.' The sale of these liquors is prohibited without reference to whether in fact they intoxicate." And again further down on the page he quotes with approval from the Edwards case: "Whether the liquors fell within the classes expressly prohibited by the statute, it was not necessary to prove that they were of an intoxicating character." Citing the cases of State v. Auditor, 68 Oh. St. 635, 67 N.E. 1062; United States v. Cohn, 2 I. T. 474, 52 S.W. 38-44. In the last case above cited, the court uses this language: " If it were intended that only such of these as could be shown to be intoxicating, should be included, why name them at all? Why not say that all intoxicating liquors and drinks should be prohibited?" To the same effect, note the following cases: State v. York, 74 N.H. 125, 65 A. 685; State v. Frederickson, 101 Me. 37, 63 A. 535, 115 Am. St. Rep. 295, 6 L. R. A. (N. S.) 186; State v. Conner, 99 Me. 61, 58 A. 59.

In the Frederickson case, supra, the beverage sold was cider, which was unfermented and not intoxicating, and yet the court held that it fell within the scope of the forbidden class. See the syllabus in that case.

Coming now to the last point discussed in the brief of counsel, which is the constitutionality of our statute, I will have little to say, as I think the point well settled, to use the language of the Chief Justice in the Fuller case, supra, 52 So. 877:

"I do not think the constitutionality of the statutes of this character can be successfully controverted. The police power of a state is broad enough to prohibit the sale of those things which it considers destructive of the health, the good morals, and the peace of its citizens. If the state has this power, it is necessarily vested with the authority to make its laws effective, and the subterfuges and disguises resorted to by the ingenious violators of the liquor laws are as well known to the legislator and the judge as to those who violate the law. Knowing the schemes resorted to by those who would destroy the prohibition laws and make them farcical by their failure to give that protection from the evil of intoxicants, which is their design and purpose, the legislature has met all schemes of those who would evade, by prohibiting the sale of such subterfuges. It has prohibited the sale not only of intoxicants, but of that character of intoxicants which go hand in hand with intoxicants; that is, have the character of intoxicants, though in truth they do not intoxicate. The police power of the state is not so impotent or restricted as that it cannot combat and repel all evasions. We hear much of the constitutional rights; but no man's rights are infringed upon by this act of the legislature, and the construction which I give it, and which this court has given it, unless such person desires to engage in the traffic of intoxicants. Surely the state can say to such person that you cannot profit in the sale of this contraband article of merchandise, no matter how small the quantity sold, or by what name you call it. If this great power of the state could be thus thwarted by those engaged in criminal acts, it would indeed be an impotent thing. In criminal and in civil law, fraud, disguise, and pretense, whatever form it has assumed in an effort to subvert the good faith of the law, has not been subtle enough to evade the legislatures and the courts for long."

OPINION

MAYES, C. J.

The appellant brought suit in the circuit court of Hinds county against C. C. Lynch to recover the sum of five hundred dollars claimed to be due appellant by virtue of a contract which it had with Lynch and which he refused to pay. Appellant failed to recover judgment in the court below; hence prosecutes this appeal.

...