133 Mo. App. 261 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1908
(after stating the facts) — If evidence to prove the purpose for which defendant leased the premises was incompetent, its admission was harmless because the lease document shows on its face what was
Plaintiff’s counsel insist that inasmuch as a corporation cannot be licensed to keep a dramshop', the clause providing for the surrender of the term in the event a license for a dramshop could not be procured, is against public policy and void. It is argued that if defendant was permitted to put an individual in possession of the premises to conduct a saloon for its benefit, this would be doing indirectly what it was forbidden to do directly. It does not appear the defendant was going to put a man in there to conduct a saloon as its agent; but merely that the property wtas rented for saloon purposes and probably to.increase the sale of defendant’s beer. The lease does not reveal what, arrangement defendant contemplated making with the person who would keep a dram-shop on the property, nor are we informed by the evidence what terms it actually made with Wurtenbacher who kept one there. The record will support the conclusion that the .arrangement was hot one by which defendant was the real owner of the saloon and the keeper, its custodian. Hence if an arrangement of the latter sort would be unlawful, and we do not decide the point,
We are clear the judgment is for the right party and will be affirmed.