Alpha Distributing Company Of California, Inc. v. Jack Daniel Distillery

304 F.2d 451 ALPHA DISTRIBUTING COMPANY OF CALIFORNIA, Inc., also doing business under the name and style of Alpha Distributing Company, Inc., Appellant, v. JACK DANIEL DISTILLERY, LEM MOTLOW PROP., INC., a corporation, Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation, a corporation; et al., Appellees. No. 17526. United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit. June 14, 1962. J. Albert Hutchinson, San Francisco, Cal., for appellant. Dunne, Dunne, & Phelps, and Arthur B. Dunne, Louis L. Phelps, and Wallace R. Peck, San Francisco, Cal., for appellees. Before CHAMBERS and MERRILL, Circuit Judges, and ROSS, District Judge. PER CURIAM. 1 For reasons thought adequate by Jack Daniel Distillery and its parent company, Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation, the distributorship in California of Alpha Distributing Company for Jack Daniel, a popular brand of Tennessee bourbon whiskey, has been cancelled. The distillery companies say this is nothing more than the operation of the free enterprise system. Alpha, plaintiff and appellant, asserts many reasons which it claims establish that the distillers do not have a right to deprive it of the custom, which was indeed profitable. 2 The distributorship was…