Opinion ID: 482848
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Victualler's License

Text: 24 The appellants' assertions against the Selectmen have even less nutritive value than the charges levied against the Board. The Chongris brothers contend that there has been a bite taken out of procedural due process by reason of the Selectmen's failure (in 1979 and thereafter) to issue--or take any action on, other than to table--a conditional common victualler's license to which plaintiffs felt entitled under M.G.L. ch. 140, Sec. 6. In serving up this bill of fare, the appellants concocted nothing upon which relief could properly have been granted below. 25 It is hornbook law that, to fashion a procedural due process claim under the fourteenth amendment, the plaintiffs must have possessed some constitutionally cognizable interest--in the present circumstances, a protectible property interest. Parratt, 451 U.S. at 536, 101 S.Ct. at 1913; Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 569-70, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2705, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). It is likewise a black-letter certainty that property rights, while protected by the federal Constitution, are creatures of state law. See Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 344 n. 7, 96 S.Ct. 2074, 2077 n. 7, 48 L.Ed.2d 684 (1976); Roth, 408 U.S. at 577, 92 S.Ct. 2709. We thus look to the provisions of Massachusetts law anent victualler licensure to determine if these plaintiffs had any constitutionally significant interest in the hoped-for conditional license which they say that the Selectmen refused to issue to them. 26 M.G.L. ch. 140, Sec. 2 tells us that [l]icensing authorities may grant licenses to persons to be innholders or common victuallers. (emphasis supplied). The statute goes on to state that it shall not require the licensing authorities to grant either of said licenses if, in their opinion, the public good does not require it. Id. And, M.G.L. ch. 140, Sec. 6 provides in relevant part that: 27 A common victualler's or innholder's license may be issued to an applicant therefor if at the time of his application he has upon his premises the necessary implements and facilities for cooking, preparing and serving food.... An applicant for [such] a license ..., proposed to be exercised upon premises which have not been equipped with fixtures or supplied with necessary implements and facilities for cooking, preparing and serving food ... shall file with the licensing authorities a plan showing the location of counters, tables, ranges, toilets and in general the proposed set-up of the premises ... together with an itemized estimate of the cost of said proposed set-up ...; and thereupon the licensing authorities may grant a common victualler's ... license ... upon the condition that such license shall issue upon the completion of the premises according to the plans and estimate submitted,.... (emphasis supplied) 28 As the foregoing provisions make abundantly clear, the issuance of a conditional common victualler's license is altogether permissive. The appellants cannot possibly be said to have enjoyed an entitlement to such a license merely because they submitted a timely application for one. This has been the law of Massachusetts for, at least, half a century, when the Commonwealth's Supreme Judicial Court declared that: 29 The licensing authorities are not now required to grant any licenses to common victuallers. Whether any such licenses shall be granted and, if any, the number to be granted rest in the sound judgment of the licensing board as to the demands of the public welfare in the respective communities. 30 Liggett Drug Co. v. Board of License Comm'rs, 296 Mass. 41, 50, 4 N.E.2d 628, 634 (1936). 31 Accordingly, the appellants possessed no property interest in the conditional common victualler's license such as would entitle them to the prophylaxis of procedural due process or to relief under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. They had, at best, a mere unilateral expectation of receiving such largesse. That being so, their federal claims against the Selectmen are bootless. 8