Opinion
04-12-1906
In re VEASEY.
C. W. Cullen and R. C. White, for applicant Robert G. Houston and Henry B. Freeney, for exceptants.
Application by Theodore A. Veasey for a license to sell liquor at the Stone House in Delmar, to which certain exceptions were filed. License refused.
Argued before , and SPRUANCE and BOYCE, JJ.
C. W. Cullen and R. C. White, for applicant Robert G. Houston and Henry B. Freeney, for exceptants.
Appended to the application were the signatures of 35 persons, alleged to be freeholders residing in united school districts Nos. 163 and 163 1/2 in said county, the place where the said Stone House was located Among the exceptions filed was the following: "(10) That the said Theodore H. Veasey is not a suitable person to whom license should be granted in this: that he has sworn falsely, in that his certificate and recommendation aforesaid was not read to or by each of the signers thereof." Six of said signers testified before the court that the application had not been read to them, nor had they read the same themselves. Thereupon counsel for the exceptants moved to dismiss the application on that ground.
Mr. Cullen: The statute requires that there shall be 12 signers. This application contains 35. So that there are 29 signers who are presumed to have had the application read to them, and therefore the statute requiring that 12 freeholders shall sign the application, each of whom shall read the same or shall have the same read to him, has been complied with.
LORE, C. J. The statute (chapter 418, p. 393, § 4, 14 Laws Del.; Rev. Code 1852, amended in 1893, p. 411, c. 53) requires that the applicant for a license to sell intoxicating liquor shall present a petition with certain recommendations and that each person signing said recommendation must either have read it himself or have had the same read to him. That is the positive mandate of the law. As the evidence before us discloses that the petition was not read to or read by each of the signers to the same, we hold that the law has not been complied with, that the certificate is void, and we therefore refuse the license on that ground.