Court Opinion

ID: 9755992
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 21:01:57.486039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:13.810730
License: Public Domain

HARRELL, Judge,
concurring.
Although I agree with my colleagues’ conclusion that the circuit court’s judgment should be affirmed, I write separately solely because I do not accept their intermediate reasoning that the licensees’ testimony regarding the extent of the proposed alteration of the licensed premises did not amount to a consensual restriction (maj. op. at 319, 705 A.2d at 22) of the type discussed in Fells Point Cafe. See Fells Point Cafe, 344 Md. at 137-41, 685 A.2d 772. I believe the majority strays in its analysis when it focuses, for purposes of deciding this point, on the highlighted testimony from the 16 August 1996 show cause violation hearing, rather than on the 22 May 1995 hearing regarding the scope of the original request to alter the licensed premises.
Appellee conceded at oral argument that Local Rule 15, for present purposes, is a lawfully enacted requirement. It does not take extensive inquiry into the legislative intent of Art. 2B or Local Rule 15 to divine that the general public health, safety, and welfare (and the specific implications related thereto of regulating the manner and place of the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages) are served by requiring *323licensees to submit for consideration and approval their specific plans proposing to alter the size of the licensed premises and/or the operational modalities for the purveying of alcoholic beverages as defined previously when the license was issued, transferred, or renewed.
A failure to recognize and honor this regulatory linkage could impair a local board’s ability to enforce Art. 2B. For example, in the present case, if the licensees were not required to obtain prior Board approval before installing the deck and placing it in service, alcohol might be served to minors on the deck, which deck area could be argued not to be a part of the licensed premises theoretically and, thus, as off-premise activity, beyond Board regulation. The need for specificity and accountability regarding premises modification situations seems obvious.
Turning to the relevant testimony of the licensee before the Board on 22 May 1995, although understandably “flexible” from a businessperson’s perspective, I view it, when taken together with the actual plans submitted with the application, as amounting to the equivalent of a consensual limitation on the licensees’ method of purveying alcohol to patrons on the proposed deck. As such, the majority errs in not concluding likewise. Had the majority reached the conclusion I reach on this score, its analysis thereafter should have been directed to determining whether the consensual restriction was of a kind contemplated by Fells Point Cafe as possibly not valid. See Fells Point Cafe, 344 Md. at 141, 685 A.2d 772.
In further support of my view that the instant case qualifies as the equivalent of a consensual restriction, I point out that Mr. DiPaola’s equivocal testimony of 22 May 1995 regarding the proposed methods of dispensing alcohol to deck patrons in no sense can be construed as amending the actual plans which were the basis of the licensees’ application and the Board’s express approval. The best that can be said about his testimony regarding the possibility of a “small service bar” on the deck is that the potential for such depended on future interpretation of then unknown “customer demand,” a consider*324ation that inherently mixes subjective and objective factors. For the present, however, alcohol service to deck patrons was to be from the existing interior bar or a mobile frozen drink cart. Hence, the plans for which approval was sought depicted no permanent deck bar.4 These inducements, dangled by the licensees and their attorney before the Board, are an uncoerced proffer similar to the consensual restrictions discussed in Fells Point Cafe. It is of no consequence that the Board, in approving “this plan,” did not express its reliance, or right to rely, on the licensee’s testimony by conditioning its approval expressly with a relevant negative restriction, limitation, or condition (e.g., licensees may not have a permanent service bar on the deck). The Board approved a “plan” with no fixed service bar on the deck because none was proposed. Read together with the testimony of 22 May 1995, the “plan” is thus the functional equivalent of a consensual restriction within the meaning of Fells Point Cafe.
I hasten to add that, nonetheless, I reach the same result as the majority and the circuit court because I believe the Court of Appeals, in interpreting the legislative intent of Art. 2B, has held clearly that local boards, unless granted powers therein to the contrary, may only enforce violations of Art. 2B and/or the validly enacted local rules through fines, suspension of licenses, or revocation of licenses. See Hollywood Productions, 344 Md. at 15, 684 A.2d 837; Fells Point Cafe, 344 Md. at 136-37, 685 A.2d 772.

. It seems obvious to me that the location and number of points of alcohol dispensation on a licensed premises implicate questions that have an impact upon the control of alcohol service to patrons, some of whom may become inebriants or may be minors. This is quintessentially the stuff of which Art. 2B speaks in many of its provisions. Licensees, as well as the Board, should have a reason to care about this as it complicates their oversight responsibilities for their employees who dispense alcoholic beverages.