Court Opinion

ID: 9765701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:14:43.777216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:13.954600
License: Public Domain

Gailor, Justice.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion on two grounds, namely: (1) the complainant is a foreign corporation and not qualified to do business in Tennessee. By the bill, filed against the defendants, who are residents, citizens and licensees of the State, the complainant, although it has no contract with the defendants, seeks to have the Tennessee Courts restrict the licenses of the defendants by enjoining them from selling liquor at a price contrary to terms of contract which complainant has with third parties who are not parties to this suit and are asserting no rights against the defendants.
Under similar facts, this Court refused relief in United Artists Corporation v. Board of Censors, Tenn. Sup., 225 S. W. (2d) 550. There, the unqualified foreign corporation sought relief against the Board of Censors of the City of Memphis. The exhibitors of moving pictures, who were primarily affected by the exercise of censorship, were not before the Court. This Court approved the action of the Trial Judge in dismissing the suit of the unqualified foreign corporation, saying in the course of the opinion: "We think the constitutionality of these statutes and ordinances cannot be questioned on the grounds of their abridgement of the right of ‘freedom of speech’ except by someone who has the right to speak and is denied the privilege of speaking. The gist of the *489present action is that the statutes and ordinances herein assailed constitute an abridgement not of their right to speak but of the right of third persons to speak and who are not parties to this cause. In the instant case no exhibitors of moving pictures in Memphis, to whom these ordinances and statutes apply, are claiming that they are denied ‘freedom of speech’ or the right to contract with the petitioners.” 225 S. W. (2d) at page 554.
In the present case, the competing local retailers under contract with the complainant who are directly affected by the alleged acts of the defendants, are not before the Court.
The question here presented is not the constitutionality of the statute, but the declaration of the application of a Tennessee statute to a local situation, and the injunction of local action. Clearly, both the declaration and injunction were matters within the sound discretion of the Chancellor. Newsum v. Interstate Realty Co., 152 Tenn. 302, 278 S. W. 56; Harrell v. American Home Mortg. Co., 162 Tenn. 371, 36 S. W. (2d) 888. Since complainant is a foreign corporation, not qualified to do business in Tennessee, and has no rights of contract against the defendants, the bill presents no equities to support a finding that the Chancellor abused his discretion in refusing the declaration sought.
As to my second ground of dissent, the sale of alcoholic liquor was not in contemplation of the Legislature when the Fair Trade Act was passed in 1937, and therefore, such sale is not-regulated by that Act. The general sale of liquor is still illegal in Tennessee, and it is only by complying with the specific conditions and limitations of Chapter 49 of the Public Acts of 1939, passed two years after the Fair Trade Act, that the sale of liquor is permissible.
*490While it is true that the Act of 1937 purports to relate to all commodities that are the subject of commerce, it has been specifically and frequently held by this Court that the sale of liquor and the liquor traffic is the subject of special legislation, and extraordinary regulation, Motlow v. State, 125 Tenn. 547, 145 S W. 177, L. R. A. 1916F, 177; State ex rel. Saperstein v. Bass, 177 Tenn. 609, 152 S. W. (2d) 236; State ex rel. Major v. Cummings, 178 Tenn. 378, 158 S. W. (2d) 713, 139 A. L. R. 837; McCanless v. State ex rel. Hamm, 181 Tenn. 308, 181 S. W. (2d) 154, 153 A. L. R. 832, and I conclude from those authorities that the legal sale of liquor is exclusively governed and' controlled in Tennessee by Chapter 49 of the Public Acts of 1939. The only Tennessee case cited in the majority opinion in support of its contrary holding, is that of State ex rel. v. Bernstein, 145 Tenn. 74, 238 S. W. 91. That case had to do with the application of the Nuisance Act to gambling and had nothing, whatever, to do with liquor. Cases cited in the majority opinion on this point from other jurisdictions would be persuasive only if it was shown that the statutory law of those jurisdictions is identical with that of Tennessee.
The Act of 1939 contains many express exceptions, limitations and conditions on the sale of liquor, so that it would have been an easy matter for the Legislature, if it had intended to do so, to include those exceptions and limitations of the Fair Trade Act which had been passed two years before. Since the Legislature did include many exceptions in the Act of 1939, under well-established rules of statutory construction, it is beyond the authority of the Judiciary to add another.
“It is a familiar rule of statutory construction that where a general' rule is established by statute with an *491exception, the Court will not curtail the former nor add to the latter by implication. An express exception, exemption, or saving excludes others.” Perry v. Sevier County Beer Commission, 181 Tenn. 696, 703, 184 S. W. (2d) 32, 34; Kelly & Co. v. State, 123 Tenn. 516, 132 S. W. 193; Turner v. Eslick, 146 Tenn. 236, 240 S. W. 786; Evans v. McCabe, 164 Tenn. 672, 52 S. W. (2d) 159, 617.
In my view, it is unnecessary to invoke the other rule of law, equally applicable, announced in State v. Nashville Baseball Ass’n., 141 Tenn. 456, 462, 211 S. W. 357, 4 A. L. R. 368, that since, at the time the Fair Trade Act was passed in 1937, the sale of liquor was unlawful in Tennessee, regulation of the liquor traffic by the Fair Trade Act could not have been in the contemplation of the Legislature. This rule, however, merely fortifies my conclusion.
I am authorized to say that Justice TomliNSON joins in the first ground of this dissent.