State v. Green

• Decision Date: 27 March 1900
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. GREEN.

35 S.E. 462

126 N.C. 1032

STATE

v.GREEN.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

March 27, 1900.

licenses—buying and selling meat—construction of statute.

Laws 1899, c. 11, § 51, imposing an annual license tax upon the business of "buying and selling fresh meat from offices, stores, stalls or vehicles, " in cities and towns, applies only to persons conducting such business in an incorporated town, and does not affect one engaged in the business in an unincorporated locality, having a population of from two to four thousand people, and lying about a mile beyond the corporate limits of a town.

Appeal from superior court, Durham county; Moore, Judge.

J. B. Green was indicted for carrying on the business of selling fresh meat without a license. Prom a judgment of conviction, he appeals. Reversed.

Boone, Bryant & Biggs, for appellant.

The Attorney General, for the State.

CLARK, J. Section 51, c. 11, Laws 1899, imposes an annual license tax upon the business of "buying and selling fresh meat from offices, stores, stalls or vehicles, " as follows:

'In cities or towns of 12, 000 inhabitants or over, $7.50; in cities or towns from 8, 000 to 12, 000 inhabitants, three dollars." The defendant is indicted for carrying on such business in the town of East Durham without having paid the license tax above required. The special verdict finds that the defendant carried on such business, without having paid any license tax, at a small stand near the Durham Cotton Mills, situate about one mile outside the corporate limits of Durham, in a locality known as "East Durham, " which is a post office and railroad station, but which is not within the limits of any incorporated town; that within a radius of one mile from such stand the number of inhabitants is between 2, 000 and 4, 000. The sole question raised is whether the section imposing this license tax applies to towns not incorporated. Colloquially speaking, towns may be any aggregation of houses, and of any size. This very indefiniteness would seem to indicate that in authorizing this tax the legislature did not intend to leave open a question which could only be settled in each case for itself, — whether a given aggregation of houses was a "town"; whether 20 houses or 50 houses or 100 houses, or 200 people or 500 or 1, 000 people would make a town, and in what radius they must be compressed. Such loose expressions are common in ordinary conversation, but are not admissible in a statute imposing a tax and making a misdemeanor. "When there is any ambiguity, the construction must be...