Case Name: Aquilla J. Randall v. The State of Ohio
Court: Supreme Court of Ohio
Jurisdiction: Ohio
Decision Date: 1863-12
Citations: 14 Ohio St. 435
Docket Number: 
Parties: Aquilla J. Randall v. The State of Ohio
Judges: 
Reporter: Ohio State Reports, New Service
Volume: 14
Pages: 435–436

Head Matter:
Aquilla J. Randall v. The State of Ohio
On the trial of an indictment for selling intoxicating liquor to a minor, without the written consent of his parent, etc., it is error to exclude proof offered hy defendant that the liquor was drawn and delivered to the minor in pursuance of an agreement between the parent and defendant on the previous day, fci its purchase and subsequent delivery to the minor.
Error to the court of common pleas of Miami county.
The plaintiff in error was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced to pay a fine and costs, at the August term, 1860, of the Miami common pleas, for unlawfully and knowingly selling intoxicating liquors to a minor without the written consent of his parent, guardian or family physician.
It appears from the bill of exceptions, that testimony was given to the jury, on the part of the state, tending to prove that the minor received the liquor from the plaintiff in error, in a bottle which he brought with him, paid for it, and took it away; and thereupon the plaintiff in error, offered to prove, “ That the minor had been sent by his father for' the liquor, on a personal order, which the father had given upon the preceding day, and to which the defendant (now plaintiff in error) had agreed, and that the liquor was delivered in accordance with that understanding.”
But the court refused to permit the evidence to be given to the jury, “unless the defendant” (now plaintiff in error) “also proposed to show that the liquor so alleged to have been purchased by the father of the boy on the evening preceding the day it was so furnished him, was, under the alleged contract of purchase by the father, separated and set apart from the package or bulk from which it was drawn and delivered to the boy.”
To this opinion and refusal of the court the plaintiff in error excepted, and to review the same, and reverse the judgment, this writ of error is prosecuted.
Thomas Sellers, for plaintiff in error.
L. R. Oriichfield, attorney general, for the state.

Opinion:
By tub Court.
The testimony offered by defendant was clearly admissible, and should have been submitted to the jury. It had a legitimate tendency to prove a sale to the father and not to the son, by proving that it was delivered in accordance with an agreement between defendant and the father, for the purchase and sale of the liquor, made upon one day, and to be consummated on the next by a delivery to the son, as the agent of his father. The court seems to have supposed that the " alleged sale " to the father was not complete without a delivery of the thing sold, or at least a separation of it from the bulk out of which it was eventually drawn. This may be true, but the subsequent delivery to the' son, in pursuance of the previous agreement, if so found by the jury, would operate hy way of relation, and constitute a delivery to the father under the agreement.
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.