Commonwealth v. Zelt

Citations

• 138 Pa. 615
• 21 A. 7
• 1891 Pa. LEXIS 1139

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported.]</p> <p>1. The word “ known,” in § 17, act of May 18, 1887, P. L. 113, prohibiting the furnishing of liquor to persons of known intemperate habits, does not</p> <p>mean that such habits must be “ known ” to the furnisher; that phrase is but descriptive of a class of persons to whom a dealer sells at his peril, his intent in making the sale being immaterial.</p> <p>2. Every man has a reputation for sobriety or for intemperance, in the community wherein he resides; and, when a man becomes generally known as an intemperate man in his neighborhood, a person who sells him liquor within that neighborhood, must ascertain and take notice of such reputation at his peril.</p> <p>3. While, as was held in Leisy v. Hardin, 136 U. S. 100, a state cannot prohibit by a general law the importation from another state of an article of commerce, and its sale by the importer in the original package in which it was imported, the states may, in some instances and for particular purposes, regulate the sale of such packages by partial prohibitions thereof.</p> <p>4. State laws prohibiting the sale of liquors to minors and to persons of known intemperate habits, are valid regulations as applied to imported liquors sold in the original packages, since they do not interfere with the general power to import and sell, and but incidentally affect interstate commerce by protecting two classes who are wards of the law, one of them not sui juris and the other practically so.</p> <p>5. Whether a number of quart and pint bottles of whiskey or beer, packed in boxes or barrels, and so shipped into this state, could have been taken out of the box or barrel containing them, and retailed singly by the importer, as original packages, under the protection of the federal constitution, prior to the act of Congress of August 8, 1890, not decided.</p> <p>6. A defendant, who, in a prosecution for unlicensed sales of liquors made by him prior to August 8, 1890, set up as a defence that he was t