Vigliotti v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

• Decision Date: 10 April 1922
• Docket Number: No. 530,530
• Citation: 258 U.S. 403,42 S.Ct. 330,66 L.Ed. 686
• Parties: VIGLIOTTI v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

258 U.S. 403

42 S.Ct. 330

66 L.Ed. 686

VIGLIOTTI

v COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA.

No. 530.

Argued March 14, 1922.

Decided April 10, 1922.

Messrs. Frank Davis, Jr., of Washington, D. C., and H. S. Dumbauld, of Uniontown, Pa., for plaintiff in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 403-406 intentionally omitted] Mr. Geo. E. Alter, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for the Commonwealth of pennsylvania.

Mr. Justice BRANDEIS delivered the opinion of the Court.

In the court of quarter sessions of Fayette county, Pa., Vigliotti was found guilty of selling, during the spring of 1920, spirituous liquor without a license, in violation of section 15 of the Act of May 13, 1887 (P. L. 108), known as the Brooks Law (Pa. St. 1920, § 14007). The liquor so sold was a preparation called 'Jamaica ginger,' containing 88 per cent. of alcohol. The defendant claimed seasonably that the state law as applied deprived him of rights guaranteed by the federal Constitution, because the sales complained of had been made after January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment became effective, after which the Volstead Act was the only law applicable to sales of intoxicating liquors. This claim was overruled by the trial court; the defendant was sentenced; the judgment was affirmed by both the Superior Court (75 Pa. Sup. Ct. 366) and the Supreme Court of the state (271 Pa. 10, 115 Atl. 20), and the case comes here on writ of error under section 237 of the Judicial Code as amended (Comp. St. § 1214). The question presented for our decision is whether the provision of the Brooks Law here applied had been superseded by the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act (41 Stat. 305).

The Brooks Law, as construed by the courts of the state. prohibits every sale of spirituous liquor without a license, excepting only such sales as are made by druggists, and these are forbidden to sell intoxicating liquors except on prescription of a regular physician. The law applies, however small the percentage of alcohol, and although the liquor is not intoxicating. It applies to liquor sold solely for industrial uses. It does not purport to confer upon any one anywhere the right to a license, nor does it authorize the sale of liquor in any city or county having a special prohibitory law. It merely grants to the appropriate officials, where such authority exists, discretion to give or to withhold the license under the conditions prescribed. In case of an indictment for selling without a license, a sale is presumed to be unlawful, and the burden is on the defendant to show the authority on which he acted. It is thus primarily a prohibitory law, and its prohibitory features are not so dependent upon those respecting license as to be swept away by the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. The Supreme Court declared further that:

'The Brooks Law still survives as Pennsylvania's own police power method of officially listing and adequately controlling the customary sources of general supply and distribution, to the peoples within...