Case Name: John and Isaac Gray vs. The Commonwealth
Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: Kentucky
Decision Date: 1840-04-24
Citations: 9 Dana 300
Docket Number: 
Parties: John and Isaac Gray vs. The Commonwealth.
Judges: 
Reporter: Kentucky Reports
Volume: 39
Pages: 300–301

Head Matter:
John and Isaac Gray vs. The Commonwealth.
April, 24.
Two individuals convicted of keeping a tippling house together, cannot complain that they are fined $60 jointly—the sum for which each of them is liable.
A tavern keeper, duly licensed, may have his bar room in an apartment which is not connected by any door way, with his main building, but separate from it; and may there retail spiritous liquors, by himself or partner, without a violation of law—provided this separate barroom constitutes, in good faith, apart of the tavern, and the license is not used as a fraudulent shield for a ‘grocery.’
Indictment.
From the Circuit Court for Caldweld County.
[Mess. J. T. and P. C. Morehead for plaintiffs: Atto. Gen. Cates for the Commonwealth. ]

Opinion:
The Chief Justice
delivered the Opinion of the Court.
If, as found by the jury and adjudged by the Court, the plaintiffs in error were guilty of keeping (jointly) a tippling house, they have certainly no right to ask a reversal of the joint judgment against them, for only sixty dollars, for which each of them was separately liable.
But it seems to us that the Circuit Judge erred in peremptorily instructing the jury, that the license to John. Gray to keep a tavern in his "brick house," did not apply to the framed room adjoining it (and in which spirits were retailed,) unless that room and the brick house were connected by a common door,
The wooden room may have been, in fact as well as design, an integral portion of the dwelling described as "the brick house." And if it were so considered and used, in good faith, and John Gray appropriated it as the retailing room of -his tavern, and he and Isaac Gray were partners — then undoubtedly neither of them was guilty, as charged, of keeping a tippling house without license to keep a tavern. Wherefore, though the license could not be perverted so as to cover a drinking room, such as is commonly called a "grocery," yet, if the wooden room in question had been used in good faith, as the "bar room" of the tavern, the instruction was wrong.
Wherefore, as there was some evidence on this point, the effect of which the jury had, in our judgment, a right to consider and decide upon — the judgment must be reversed, and the cause be remanded.