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Show Utah Supreme Court Upholds Boulder's 1995 Liquor Decision BOULDER The Utah Supreme Court on Friday affirmed a Sixth District Court decision that upheld a 1995 decision by the Boulder Town Council denying Mark Austin, applying for Boulder Mountain Lodge, the local consent he was asking in his restaurant liquor license application. While Boulder argued that the state's "local consent" provision in the law meant that Boulder literally had the right to refuse consent, the Lodge argued that the local consent provision exercised negatively was tantamount to preventing the Lodge from participating in the state's system of liquor sales. Liquor sales in Boulder are limited lim-ited to two small convenience stores that sell beer for off-premises consumption. State liquor stores are located in Wayne County, approximately 50 miles north of Boulder, and in Escalante, approximately approx-imately 30 miles southwest. Prior to Austin's original request, re-quest, the town had conducted an informal survey that appeared to reveal that the majority of 'residents did not want on-premises consumption consump-tion of alcoholic beverages. On July 6, 1995, the town council adopted an ordinance authorizing auth-orizing only licenses to sell beer for off-premises consumption. The ordinance in effect was a total ban on consent to any licenses to sell liquor or beer fr prruscs consumption. con-sumption. A second request from Boulder Mountain Lodge in February 1996 met a similar response from the town based on the new ordinance and that a previous request to another restaurant had been denied. When an attorney for Boulder Mountain Lodge appeared before the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control the following month, charging, according to the Supreme Court document, "capricious and arbitrary actions on the part of Boulder's town council," the State Commission said that before issuing issu-ing a state license, it had "historically "his-torically required local consent" from the community's governing body. It nevertheless acknowledged that it had never encountered a refusal and "advised the Lodge to pursue judicial remedies." Friday's decision appears to strengthen the right of local communities com-munities to determine their local laws governing the sale of alcohol and could bring about changes in other communities statewide. It also points up the complex nature of Utah's liquor laws, considered by some to be antiquated and unfair. Attorneys for the Lodge sought to compel Boulder through the Sixth District Court to issue "local consent" and failed, giving Boulder broad discretion to withhold consent. The Lodge appealed the Sixth District Court's decision and Friday's Supreme Court affirmation of that decision appears to close the door to Boulder Mountain Lodge's desire to serve alcoholic beverages to its customers, often European tourists and others accustomed to having alcohol with their meals. According to the Supreme Court decision, Utah's statutes say "both a local business license permitting the sale of alcoholic beverages and a state-issued restaurant liquor license are necessary. If the local authority grants a business license to the restaurant, the license will serve as local consent for obtaining the state liquor license." The statute assumes that a new restaurant will first obtain a local business license, then apply to the state for a liquor license. "Here the Lodge, prior to completion of construction on its restaurant, sought first to obtain the state liquor license and then to obtain the local business license. Had the Lodge initially applied for a business license and been denied based on the ordinance, we could then review Boulder's action in (See BOULDER UPHELD Page 5) BOULDER UPHELD From Front Page light of its alleged failure to comply with the requirements of section 11-10-1(5). Instead, because be-cause the Lodge only requested local consent for the liquor license application, appli-cation, we cannot say that Boulder's failure to adopt written rules regarding the granting or denying of business licenses entitles the Lodge to relief." Concurring with Associate Chief Justice Christine Durham's decision were Chief Justice Richard Howe, Justice Daniel Stewart, Justice Leonard Russon, and Judge Russell Bench, Court of Appeals, who sat for Justice Michael Zimmerman Zim-merman who disqualified himself. |
