 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Street Road Bar & Grille6/20/2005
e community. Appellee then stresses the Goldens' testimony concerning their community involvement, and the absence of Board evidence concerning their reputations, as opposed to instances of conduct reflected in citations and convictions. Appellee also echoes the Commonwealth Court's suggestion that the Liquor Code does not authorize denial of a license application premised upon misdemeanor convictions of corporate officers. With respect to the Board's argument that criminal convictions can affect a person's reputation, appellee concedes that point as a general matter, but then argues that the question here is whether in fact the Goldens' reputations were so affected. Appellee then notes that no evidence was presented to suggest that persons in the Goldens' community were even aware of their convictions, much less how that awareness affected their estimation of the brothers' reputations.
Bearing in mind the legislative proscription against interpreting a statute in a way that would lead to absurd or unreasonable results, the broad definition of relevance, and the relaxed evidentiary standards attending agency review, we have no difficulty in finding that the Commonwealth Court erred in holding that the Goldens' citation history and misdemeanor records were irrelevant. The requirement that the applicant for various forms of liquor licenses or permits be a "reputable person" or person of "good repute," or that the establishment to be operated be a reputable one, is common throughout the Liquor Code. See, e.g., 47 Pa.C.S. §§ 1-102, 2-207, 4-431, 4-432, 4-433, 4-437, 4-461, 7-703. The Code offers no explicit guidance on factors that may be deemed pertinent to assessing repute, and thus we are left to examine the common usage of the word. As commonly understood, repute is the account or consideration of a person held by others, i.e., what people think of another, reputation. However, this Court has noted that, in common parlance,
he word "character" is frequently used interchangeably with the word "reputation." In a legal sense it means "reputation" as distinguished from "disposition." Character grows out of particular acts, but is not proved by them, inasmuch as a person may under the stress of special circumstances do a thing which is contrary to his ordinary disposition and practice. The method of proving character is by showing the general reputation of the person in the neighborhood in which he lives. What is proven, therefore, is not a person's real character, but his character as reputed among his neighbors, or what the consensus of opinion of the neighbors is as to his character.
Commonwealth v. Webb, 97 A. 189, 196 (Pa. 1916).
The cases articulating a strict legal distinction between character and reputation evidence typically arise in the criminal law where the evidence is proffered for substantive purposes, i.e., the defendant tries to show that his general character for a pertinent trait implicated by the crime at issue is such that it is less likely that he would commit the charged crime. See generally Commonwealth v. Fulton, 830 A.2d 567, 572-73 (Pa. 2003) (plurality opinion); id. at 577-78 (Saylor, J., dissenting). We would not read too much into the necessarily fine lines that have been drawn in that area in order to assess properly the General Assembly's use of "repute" as grounds for restricting the persons and establishments to whom a liquor license may be issued. There is no indication in the Liquor Code that the General Assembly intended the term in a technical legal sense, i.e., barring evidence of instances revealing "character" in exclusive favor of classic reputation testimony. Indeed, the statute, which was enacted shortly after Prohibition ended, emp
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Pennsylvania DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to DUI Lawyers in your area.
|
|