Haskin v. State

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Haskin, charged in two indictments with selling and furnishing alcoholic beverages to minors contrary to the provisions of Code, 1951, Art. 2B, Sec. 114 (a), was found guilty on both by the court sitting without a jury. The selling and furnishing was by employees of Haskin’s lunchroom at times when he was not on the premises. The lunchroom sold beer under a liquor license issued to Haskin.

The employees involved pleáded guilty to the charges against them. On May 21, 1956, over a period of several hours, Dewey ¹²⁹ Tilly, fifteen, was supplied with twelve beers and his companion, Arthur Knott, seventeen, with four to six beers, Knott being the purchaser. At no time was either asked who he was or how old he was. On at least three previous occasions when Tilly had visited the lunchroom, he had never been asked to identify himself or for his age.

On only one of Knott’s ten or twelve previous visits had he been asked his age, and he had then produced his father’s voter’s card. On May 26, Dennis Tillis, eighteen years old, purchased twelve bottles of beer at the lunchroom. Tillis showed the employee who waited on him a card issued by the Department of Recreation to one John Vulgaris, indicating that the issuee played amateur baseball under the sponsorship of the Department. It bore the date of March 27, 1935, but nothing to show that this was a date of birth.

It was signed by Vulgaris. The statute under which Haskin was convicted provides that an accused shall not be found guilty under it if he establishes “to the satisfaction of the jury or the court sitting as a jury, that he used due caution to establish that such minor under twenty-one years of age was not, in fact, a minor * * Haskin argues that the inspection of the voter’s card offered by Knott and the ball player’s certificate produced by Tillis, shows that he used due caution, and even if the contrary be assumed, he cannot be charged with violations of the law committed in his absence, and without his knowledge. He argues that “It is unreasonable, the appellant feels, to make one liable for a crime when he did not even have knowledge of its commission. Such a liability is unrealistic.” To the State’s counter that Carroll v. State, 63 Md. 551 , firmly established that the licensee may be held criminally liable for unlawful sales made by his employee, Haskin replies that the Carroll case “was a misinterpretation of the statute and the law, and that, even if it were not, the principle of law involved is in need of revision because the old one is both out-dated and a deprivation of constitutional rights.” We turn first to appellant’s last contention.

In the Carroll case, the law provided that “any person” who sold liquors to a minor should be fined or imprisoned and his license sup ¹³⁰ pressed. The Court held that intent was not an essential ingredient of the offense and said of the licensee: “Being engaged in business where it is lawful to sell to all persons except such as are by law excepted, it is his duty to know when a sale is made that it is to a properly situated person. Therefore it is his duty to trust nobody to do his work but some one whom he can safely trust to discharge his whole duty, and if he does not do so, the law holds him answerable.” The licensee in the Carroll case was not present when the sale was made and had no knowledge of it, and the court refused to permit him to prove, by testimony of the bartender, that he had given instructions against sales to minors, and rejected his proffer of his own testimony that the instructions were in good faith and intended to be obeyed. The principle of the Carroll case was followed in upholding conviction of the general manager of a hotel for illegal sales by a