114 Ky. 877 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1903
Opinion of the coubt by
granting WRIT.
The Bavarian and other brewing companies were in-, dieted by the grand jury of Kenton county for a violation of section 3915 of the Kentucky Statutes, which is a section of the act of May 20, 1890, prohibiting combinations by corporations, partnerships, individuals, or persons, or associations .of persons, for the purjjose of regulating, controlling, or fixing the price of any merchandise, manufactured article, or property of any kind. Section 3917 prescribed a fine of not less than $500 nor more than $5,000 for the violation of the preceding section. A trial of the defendants under the indictment on the 8th of. October, 1902, resulted in a verdict for the defendants, which was rendered under a peremptory instruction from the court. On the following day the Commonwealth’s attorney for
By section 347 of the Criminal Code, the court of appeals is given appellate jurisdiction of penal actions and prosecutions for misdemeanors, if the judgment be for the defendant, in cases in which a fine exceeding $50' might have been inflicted. Section 348 provides: “The appeal must be prayed during the term at which the judgment is rendered, and shall be granted upon the condition that the record be lodged in the clerk’s office of the court of appeals within sixty days after the judgment.” Section 350. When the Commonwealth attorney prays an appeal, the clerk shall forthwith make and certify a complete transcript of the record and transmit the same to the attorney general, or deliver it to the Commonwealth’s attorney for that purpose. And. if the attorney general on inspecting the same believe .it proper to take the appeal, he shall do so by filing the transcript in. the..clerk’s office of the court of appeals in sixty days after judgment.” There has been no change in these provisions of the Code since it took effect, on the 1st of July, 1854. In Commonwealth v. Adams, 55 Ky., 338, which was decided in 1855, this court construed these sections of the Code, and held, first, that appeals from judgment of circuit courts in misdemeanor cases must be taken at the term at which the judgment was rendered, .and the, rec
We are therefore of the opinion that the motion for a new trial had the effect to suspend the judgment until it was finally overruled, or, in "Other words, that the judgment only became final when the motion for a new trial was finally overruled, and that, under section 348 of the Criminal Code, it was the duty of the defendant to have granted the appeal prayed; and he is directed to conform his rulings in this matter to the views herein expressed, and order will go as prayed.