29 Ind. 438 | Ind. | 1868
The appellees, remonstrants against an application for license to sell liquors, appealed from the order of the board of commissioners granting the license, but failing to give an appeal bond, the auditor refused to certify the proceedings to the Circuit Court. The appellees proceeded
The act of 1861, which expressly gives the appeal, stops there, being silent as to any bond, and indeed silent as to everything save giving the right of appeal, and a jury trial in the court to which the cause is carried by appeal. It is likewise silent as to the duty of the auditor when such appeal is taken. It requires nothing of that officer. Acts 1861, p. 143. Doubtless the statute was passed in conser quence of the decision of this court in Drapert v. The State, 14 Ind. 123, in which it was held that the remonstrant, under the act of -1859, had no right of appeal in such cases. That decision, as will be seen from an examination of it, is based chiefly upon the ground that the nature of the proceeding was of such a peculiar character that the legislature could not have intended to allow an appeal to persons resisting the grant of the license. This view was supported mainly in consequence of certain specified inconveniences to the petitioner which it was supposed would result if an appeal were allowed. The opinion was also advanced that the community had no appreciable interest in the subject, after the board of commissioners had taken action by granting the license; that the citizen could not be injured in any of his rights which the law was intended to protect, by the issuing of a license to an unfit person to engage in this traffic. This latter proposition does not, howevei', meet the concurrence of any member of the court, as now constituted. Indeed, it seems too obvious to need argument or illustration, that the citizen might and often would be most seriously injured pecuniarily, if it be granted that the law was intended only to guard pecuniary interest, by the establishment of tippling houses in his vicinity, Under the management of unfit and unscrupulous proprietors.
Indeed, it seems to us that Drapert v. The State, supra., was not correctly decided. It was not doubted, but expressly said in that case, that the petitioner might appeal from the county board if the decision of that tribunal was adverse
The judgment is reversed, with costs, and the case remanded, with instructions to overrule the demurrer.