Court Opinion

ID: 9418482
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:26:45.584333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:03.497775
License: Public Domain

*499Mr. Justice McReynolds,
dissenting.
These cases differ somewhat and I speak with reference to No. 174 — Corneli v. Moore, — finally determined on motion to dismiss.
The opinion and ruling just announced seem to me in direct conflict with Street v. Lincoln Safe Deposit Co. (1920), 254 U. S. 88. I think the reasoning of that opinion is bad; but it has been adopted, and the construction which it placed upon the act should be adhered to or frankly overruled. The effort to distinguish the present case from the earlier one is but toying with the immaterial.
Prior to the enactment of any National Prohibition -law and during the Spring of 1917, Corneli acquired the barrel of distilled spirits numbered 125,694, then on deposit in United States General Bonded Warehouse No. 1, St. Louis, Mo., where he resides. In strict conformity with law he allowed the spirits to remain there until the Autumn of 1920, when he offered to pay the taxes and demanded permission to move them to his home for lawful use.
In Street v. Lincoln Safe Deposit Co., wines and liquors, worth more than $3,000 “ securely and properly packed' and stored in bottles, barrels, casks and cases,” had long been held in the large public warehouse, No. 60 East Forty-second Street, New York City, owned and operated by the Deposit Company, and it was alleged that “ complainant does not intend to remove- the same voluntarily except as they may be required from time to time for consumption”. Notwithstanding the inhibitions óf tj|e Volstead Act it was ruled that the owner might, continúe to store them for an indefinite period and then remove them to his dwelling for personal use. The opinion not only declared the storage lawful but also said (p. 93): “ That transportation of -the liquors' to the home of ap*500pellant, under the admitted circumstances, is hot such as is prohibited by the section is too apparent to justify detailed consideration of the many provisions of the act inconsistent with a construction which would render such removal unlawful. . . .”
Corneli entrusted his supply to a government warehouse as permitted by the statute and is denied the privilege of taking it home because that warehouse is not contributory to his dwelling, nor an adjunct thereto, nor an outbuilding connected therewith. Street made no such claim concerning the Forty-second Street Warehouse — indeed his counsel seem to have been wholly ignorant of .this extraordinary extension of his home — and the decree in his favor was not rested on that gossamer. It went upon the assumption that Congress never intended to prohibit bona fide owners of lawfully acquired liquors from storing and removing them for personal use at home, although the Government stoutly maintained the contrary view. The following quotation from the opinion sufficiently indicates the theory accepted by the court:
“It may be that the custody of liquors by a warehouse company was thus not declared to be unlawful because the writers .of the act did not have such a case in mind, but it was more probably because Congress.would not consent to allow lawful possession and use of liquors in dwellings having storage facilities for them, while denying the only possible means of preserving and protecting such liquors to persons with less commodious homes. The Congress was concerned with the great problem of preventing the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes in the future, and' it seems to have given but slight attention to the consumption of such relatively small amounts of such liquors as might be in existence in private ownership and intended for consumption by the owner, his family or his guests, when the Amendment and the act should take éffect. An intention *501to confiscate private property, even in intoxicating liquors, will not be raised by inference and construction from provisions of law which have ample field for other operation in effecting a purpose clearly indicated and declared.”
If Comeli had only suspected the remarkable power of the Forty-second Street Warehouse to attach itself to the dwellings of all patrons, without regard to distance, he might have chosen a safer course. He stored where the statute said he might. • Now he is told that no analogy exists between his lonely barrel there and the many “ bot-' ties, barrels, casks and cases ” which, within more favored walls, await the pleasure óf their owner.