In re L. B. & W. 4217

This is an appeal from an order denying an application for renewal of a license for authority to deal in intoxicating liquor. The applicable territorial statutes read in part as follows:

During 1953, appellants held a license issued under the then applicable statutes of Alaska. Such a license could be granted if the place of business of the applicant were not “within two hundred feet of any school building or church.” A.C.L.A. § 35 — 4—15(3). By Chapter 116, 1953 Session Laws of the Territorial Legislature, the forbidden perimeter was extended to one quarter mile. Evidently the establishment of appellants is beyond two hundred feet, but within one quarter of a mile of a school or church. However, the amending Act provided “that a license may be re-issued for the sale of intoxicating liquor in any building in which such sale was authorized by law at a time subsequent to March 23, 1949.”

In December, 1953, Wilson presented at the office of the Clerk of the District Court at Anchorage an application for renewal of the license for the year 1954, relying upon the proviso of the amending Act. But, since he accepted advice from an employee of the office, he withheld filing of the…

I concur in the result.

As disclosed in the majority opinion, the liquor license applied for would have expired on December 31, 1954. This cause is therefore moot, and the case should be dismissed for that reason.

One of the Supreme Court decisions cited in the majority opinion teaches that this Court should not assume jurisdiction of moot causes. In Old Colony Trust Co. v. Commissioner, 1929, 279 U.S. 716, 724 , 49 S.Ct. 499, 502 , 73 L.Ed. 918 , Mr. Chief Justice Taft said:

Accordingly, I find myself unable to agree with the majority that we should decide this case upon a difficult Constitutional principle, when we have another jurisdictional basis upon which to settle it — an issue so plain that a layman, looking at the expiration date of his license, could ascertain whether he had a case or not; so plain, in other words, that it requires no recondite Constitutional exegesis to determine it.

For the reasons fully set forth in my concurring opinion in Boggess on behalf of City of Fairbanks v. Berry Corporation, 9 Cir., 233 F.2d 389 , 16 Alaska 257 , I believe that the order below should be vacated, and the case remanded to the District Court with a direction to dismiss..