Court Opinion

ID: 9751484
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:30:21.879089+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:48.285695
License: Public Domain

Inglis, J.
(dissenting). The majority opinion concedes that the grocery store in question would have been a “package store,'” as defined by the Dan-*385bury ordinance, prior to the enactment of the statute relating to package store permits in 1945. This concession obviously is correct. The statute in effect when the ordinance was adopted authorized package store permits of two classes. One of these was the unlimited package store permit, under which alcoholic and nonalcoholic liquor of all kinds might be sold in a store devoted exclusively to that business. The other was the so-called package store beer permit, under which beer only might be sold, and that only in grocery stores. General Statutes, Cum. Sup. 1935, §§ 1027c, 1030c. Both were provided for in the same subdivision of § 1027c, which lists the various classes of permits which may be issued. Both were described in the same section, § 1030c, under the title “Package store permit.1” They were identical in that they restricted the sale of liquor to that contained in sealed containers and not to be consumed on the premises. Both classes of permits were package store permits.
Nor can there be any doubt that the definition of a package store as contained in the ordinance includes all outlets which operate under either of the two classes. The ordinance reads: “A ‘Package Store’ is a place where beer or alcoholic liquor is sold under a package store permit.” The words “beer” and “alcoholic liquor” are stated in the disjunctive. If it had been intended to restrict the phrase “package store permit” to a permit for the sale of all alcoholic liquors, there would have been no need to refer to beer. The fact that the sale of beer by itself was included clearly indicates that the phrase “package store permit” was intended to include package store beer permits. The business of selling beer as it is now carried on by First National could have been carried on only under a package store *386beer permit. First National’s store, therefore, would come within the definition of a package store as contained in the ordinance.
But, say the majority, all that has been changed by the legislation of 1945 and 1947, because that legislation has set up a new kind of permit, known as a grocery store beer permit, which is not a package store permit. I am unable to attribute such an effect to that legislation. In 1945 the General Assembly rewrote § 1027c, the section which listed the various kinds of permits. General Statutes, Sup. 1945, § 622h. In doing so, however, it still continued to group in a single subsection — subsection (c) — (1) a package store permit; (2) a package store beer permit; (3) a grocery store beer permit. These three kinds of permit are defined in § 728i of the 1947 Supplement to the General Statutes, which has remained unchanged, as follows: “(a) A package store permit shall allow the retail sale of alcoholic liquor not to be drunk on the premises, such sales to be made only in sealed bottles or other containers . . . . (b) a package store beer permit shall allow the retail sale of beer in standard sized containers not to be consumed on the premises; (c) a grocery store beer permit may be granted to any store which is chiefly engaged in the sale of groceries and shall allow the retail sale of beer in standard sized containers not to be consumed on the premises.”
It is to be noted that all three of these permits restrict the sale of alcoholic liquor to liquor in sealed containers and not to be consumed on the premises. All of them, therefore, are, in essence, package store permits in just the same way as the two classes of permit defined in § 1030c were package store permits. Outlets operating under any of them might *387well fall within the definition of a package store as contained in the ordinance. That aside, the important feature of the legislation of 1945 and 1947 is that the “grocery store beer permit” authorizes exactly the same kind of business as did the package store beer permit in § 1030c of 1935. In both cases the business which may be carried on under the permit is the sale of beer in grocery stores only. It is not a new kind of permit, as the majority opinion holds. The new permit which was added in 1945, and 1947, was the package store beer permit. That permit authorized the sale of beer in general stores other than grocery stores — something which had not been permitted before 1945. The permit which was called a package store beer permit in 1936 when the Danbury ordinance was adopted is now called a grocery store beer permit. The change is merely one of name. There is no change of substance. It is still a package store permit as that phrase is used in the ordinance. It follows that the outlet for beer now operated by First National falls within the definition of a package store and is prohibited by the ordinance.
In this opinion Brown, C. J., concurred.