Court Opinion

ID: 9720200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:20:06.522671+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:03:13.255249
License: Public Domain

Carter, J.
This case involves the validity of a statute, section 53-168, R. S. Supp., 1969, which prohibits wholesalers of intoxicating liquors from giving discounts for quantity sales to retail distributors. The motion for a rehearing cites no new cases and is, in fact, a second discussion of the same issues that were before the court when the case was argued on its merits. Central Markets West, Inc. v. State, ante p. 79, 180 N. W. 2d 880.
It is contended here that our original opinion in the present case is a departure from the previous holdings of this court from Nelsen v. Tilley, 137 Neb. 327, 289 N. W. 388, 126 A. L. R. 729, to Terry Carpenter, Inc. v. Nebraska Liquor Control Com., 175 Neb. 26, 120 N. W. 2d 374. With this we cannot agree. The Tilley case relates to an attempt to regulate the automobile business, a competitive private business subject to the ordinary rules of the market place under a. private enterprise system. The instant case deals with a licensed business having a great public interest and subject to almost complete regulation by the Legislature because of the *277very nature of the business. The law applicable to a licensed business such as the manufacture, distribution, and sale of intoxicating liquors is altogether different, and well it should be.
We concede that if a statute dealing with intoxicating liquors is purely arbitrary without relation to the public interest, it would be unconstitutional. Here there is a public interest which the Legislature may properly protect. All retailers of intoxicating liquors are required to obtain a license. To obtain a license certain standards must be met, not only as to personal qualifications, but as to the location of the retail point, policing conveniences, and the like. The license is the same for each outlet and becomes of real value especially where the number of licenses in a given locality are limited. The very purpose of limiting the number of licenses is in some degree to insure that each licensee can operate at a profit and eliminate the evils that usually are inherent in a failing liquor outlet. The permitting of rebates on large sales permits large sellers to undersell the small ones with the same resulting evils. The public interest is as great in one case as in the other.
Admittedly there is a question of judicial policy involved. This court over the years has adhered to the policy of strict regulation of the liquor traffic. This court has been a consistent adherent of this principle and we are very fearful of the result if we abandon that policy in favor of applying the ordinary rules of the market place. Such a result can only compound the difficulties inherent in the administration of our liquor control laws. If our Legislature has the power to remove the sale of intoxicating liquors from private enterprise, as it did in Iowa by putting all sales in the hands of the state, it surely has the power to do anything less than that.
The original dissenting opinion makes the point that the liquor industry has been cárried on in this state for 35 years without apparent need for outlawing rebates on volume, sales. But this is a legislative policy ques*278tion. Cases cited in the original majority opinion support the holdings of that opinion. Rebates on volume sales are ordinarily beyond constitutional criticism. But when applied to the sale and distribution of alcoholic liquors, they can and do become important in regulating the business. In Terry Carpenter, Inc. v. Nebraska Liquor Control Com., supra, several cases, are cited on the constitutional question as applied to the general rules of the market place, but they are not controlling as to a licensed business: such as the sale and distribution of alcoholic liquors. Surely, if the Legislature can prohibit the sale and distribution of alcoholic liquors by private industry, it can prevent the giving of rebates having the effect of aiding one licensee and destroying the other.
In our judgment, our original opinion is not only correct, but it is a proper regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors, a licensed business involving the health, morals, and safety of the using public.
Motion fob rehearing overruled.