Reget v. Bell

• Decision Date: 30 June 1875
• Citation: 1875 WL 6057,77 Ill. 593
• Parties: MICHAEL REGETv.CAROLINE BELL.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

77 Ill. 593

1875 WL 6057 (Ill.)

MICHAEL REGET

v.CAROLINE BELL.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June Term, 1875.

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of Effingham county; the Hon. JAMES C. ALLEN, Judge, presiding.

This was an action on the case, brought by Caroline Bell against Michael Reget. The opinion of the court presents all the material facts of the case. The defendant, on the trial, was sworn, and offered to testify in relation to the sale of the liquor which caused the death of plaintiff's husband, Thompson Bell. After stating that Bell came to his place of business on the day of the alleged sale, the following question was propounded to him: “State what was said and done by him.” The court sustained an objection to the question, and the defendant excepted. Defendant's counsel then offered to prove by the defendant that the liquor was obtained under the pretext it was for other persons, but the court refused to allow the same, to which an exception was taken.

Messrs. WOOD & BARLOW, and Messrs. COOPER & KAGY, for the appellant.

Messrs. GILMORE & WHITE, for the appellee.

Mr. JUSTICE BREESE delivered the opinion of the Court:

This was case, in the Effingham circuit court, brought under the act of 1872, called the liquor law, to recover damages for the death of the husband of plaintiff, occasioned, as was alleged in both counts of the declaration, by maliciously, carelessly and negligently selling and delivering, by defendant, to plaintiff's husband, intoxicating liquors, after notice that the husband was an habitual drunkard, whereby he became intoxicated, sickened and died, leaving plaintiff without means of support.

The jury found the defendant guilty, and assessed the damages at one thousand dollars, for which the court rendered judgment. The defendant appeals.

It seems the only time at which the defendant, who kept a wholesale liquor store, sold intoxicating liquors to the deceased, was on the 23d day of December, 1873, when he purchased a jug of whiskey and took it home, only a small portion of it--a cup full--missing therefrom. He was not then drunk. He went to bed, with the jug by his bedside, which, in the morning, was nearly empty. He never left the bed alive. It is not proved the deceased was an habitual drunkard, but a hard-working, industrious man, kind to his family when sober as well as when drinking, but one who would occasionally, three or four times in a year, indulge in a “spree” of the hardest kind.

It seems very plain,...