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26 Mo. 167

State v. Runyan

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided January 15, 1858

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1858-01-15

I. The indictment is good. It is not necessary to aver more specifically the kind of liquor sold. (1 R. C. 1855, p. 688, sections 1, 2, of Dram-shop Act.) The offence consists in selling intoxicating liquor without a license. Under a dram-shop license, it may be sold in any quantity less than ten gallons; under a merchant’s license in quantities not less than one gallon. “ Any kind of license” is negatived in the indictment.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1858-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently October 1910

4 state decisions

201858186018701880189019001910decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Napton, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2This indictment charges that the defendant “ did then and there unlawfully sell to one Thomas I. Fisher intoxicating liquor, to-wit, one gallon and one quart, for the price of ten cents, without having any kind of license for that purpose.” The indictment was quashed upon motion in the circuit court, and we think correctly. This indictment was found at the October term, 1856, of the circuit court of Hickory county, and consequently falls under the provisions of the revised statutes of 1855.

¶3There is no averment that defendant was a merchant within the meaning of the first section of the act “ to license and tax merchants” (2 R. C. 1855, p. 1072) ; nor is any breach of the first section of the act to regulate dram-shops (1 R. C. 1855, p. 683) alleged. We have not been refex-red to any provision of the code of 1855 prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors in quantities exceeding a gallon without license, unless where the vendor is a merchant. The second section of the dram-shop law might be regarded as an implied prohibition were it not for the first section. The latter is a direct and positive prohibition, and yet would be entirely supererogatory if the second section should be held to bear the construction suggested.

¶4The other judges concurring, judgment affirmed.

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