Court Opinion

ID: 9538203
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:32:21.364936+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:38.049957
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent for the reasons I stated in the Entre Nous case, cited in the main opinion, and for others set out hereafter.
In my opinion the amendment to the statute places a club in the hands of one man that could destroy a legitimate corporation and assassinate the character of reputable officers, if wielded carelessly by one who, for one reason or another, chose to effect such destruction and assassination.
It is difficult for me to read the amendment and concur with the thesis of the main opinion that it was enacted to cope with abuses in connection with the consumption of liquor. It appears to me to be a statute that can bring sudden death to a corporation and its assets by administrative fiat, without benefit of trial before a competent tribunal, sans guaranties of due process, — and what is worse, accomplish-able by one single individual: To prove that this statute was not passed primarily to control the consumption of liquor, or its abuses, the statute specifically permits a person to consume any quantity of liquor he desires or can hold, if he buys it from the right people, — the Liquor Commission, —and puts it in a cubbyhole called a locker. Under the act he can become intoxicated as quickly and damply by drinking the same quantum and quality of liquor irrespective of source or where it might be stored when not in transit. He can get as drunk whether the corporation puts up a bond or not. A corporation could live up to most of the conditions of the statute and still have its establishment full of sots: But the corporation cannot live up to some of the conditions of the statute by any stretch of the imagination, because it cannot divine what may be in the mind of any particular Secretary of State, his heirsj successors or assigns, or what they might think are “reasonable” initiation fees, “reasonable” regulations, “strict” regulations and other imponderables, the violation of any of which, as determined by one man, could result in the revocation of its charter and the forfeiture of $5,000: With respect to such conditions, in my opinion, the statute makes little sense, and ■ is so vague and indefinite as to apprisfe no óné *78of what he legitimately can or cannot do, to such degree that it is unconstitutional. It delegates to the Secretary of State the power of corporate life or death, from Kanab to Cornish, with no reservations except as may exist in his mind, whether good or evil.
It is axiomatic that the best governed are those who are governed by local authority. The purposes of the act, expressed in the main opinion, could be accomplished as well and as effectively by local police under state and local laws existing prior to the enactment of the amendment in question, I believe no one successfully could show that there is a community in the state that does not have the authority, by state statute or local ordinance, to close any social club if liquor is sold in violation of the law. Doing so, however, apparently has its drawbacks, since the accused would have the traditional American right, which has been taken from him by this statute, to face his accuser and the witnesses against him, in an orderly trial before a jury of his neighbors.
• Our rights in property and in freedom of enterprise and association seem to me to be too sacred and important to be guaranteed or condemned, not by our courts under proper due process assurances, but by a politician who may or may not be a saint or a tyrant, and who may or may not like the color of one’s hair.
In my opinion, this statute is constitutionally objectionable for another reason. All of the corporations mentioned in this action had their charters before the enactment of the 1955 amendment requiring a bond and imposing other conditions. They had a franchise from the state, and for the state to require such drastic new conditions now, after these people have operated under an entirely different law, is, in my opinion, a taking of property without due process of law if they lose their charter because they cannot fulfill the conditions.