United States Distilling Co. v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 17 November 1884
• Citation: 1 N.E. 166,112 Ill. 19
• Parties: UNITED STATES DISTILLING CO. v. CITY OF CHICAGO.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

112 Ill. 19

1 N.E. 166

UNITED STATES DISTILLING CO.

v.CITY OF CHICAGO.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed November 17, 1884.

Appeal from appellate court, First district.

Edsall & Edsall and Quigg & Tuthill, for appellant.

F. S. Winston, for appellee.

SCOTT, J.

This prosecution was commenced by the city of Chicago, against the United States Distilling Company, before a justice of the peace, to recover a penalty imposed by that section of the ordinance of March 5, 1883, entitled ‘Brewers and Distillers,’ which provides that no person, firm, or corporation shall carry on or conduct the business of brewer or distiller within the limits of the city of Chicago without first paying a license therefor in the sum of $500 per annum, under a penalty of not less than $100 nor more than $200 for each and every offense; meaning thereby that each brewery and each distillery shall pay a license fee of $500 respectively. On the trial in the criminal court, to which the cause was taken on the appeal of defendant, it was admitted defendant was a corporation, and is engaged in running a distillery within the city of Chicago, and was so engaged, without a license, prior to the commencement of this suit; and the court before whom the cause was tried found defendant guilty, and rendered judgment against it in the sum of $100. That judgment was affirmed in the appellate court for the First district, and a majority of the judges of that court having made the necessary certificate, under the statute, defendant bring the case to this court on its further appeal.

Article 5, c. 24, subd. 91, § 1, Rev. St. 1874, provides that city councils, and the president and board of trustees, in villages organized under the general law, may have power ‘to tax, license, and regulate auctioneers, distillers, brewers, lumber-yards, livery-stables, public scales, money-changers, and brokers.’ This clause of the statute has been the subject of frequent construction in this court, so that most questions raised and discussed on the present record have been settled by previous decisions. It will not be necessary to enter anew upon the discussion. All that is necessary to be done is to refer to some of the most recent cases. Howland v. Chicago, 108 Ill. 496; Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 102 Ill. 560; Braun v. Chicago, 110 Ill. 186. In Braun v. Chicago it was distinctly held a license fee imposed by a city or village in pursuance of the section of the statute cited, upon certain...