Mini Booze Battles

City asks district court judge to uphold ban on sales of tiny bottles of alcohol, over the objections from liquor store owners

The legal tit for tat has been going on since May, but lately the wrangling has been ratcheted up in district court, as the early October deadline looms for a citywide ban on miniature bottles of booze.

This week, the Santa Fe city attorney's office asked First District Judge Sarah Singleton to dismiss the case entirely, saying the local ordinance trumps state law, and that the city has the right to clean up its streets by simply outlawing such sales.


The legal contention being made among the half-dozen liquor stores through their attorneys is that it is not within the purview of a local jurisdiction to single out one product and ban it in the absence of a statewide ban.


State liquor laws, the city says, are great at addressing the types of liquor that can be sold, how it should be sold, what hours it can be purchased and how it should be carried out of the store. But the state Liquor Control Act fails to address the litter problem that has ensued from such sales, an argument that the city attorney's office is making in court.


"Walk down any side street or look inside any bus stop and you'll see them," Alfred Walker, the city's assistant attorney who filed a motion for summary judgment last week, tells SFR on Friday.

Owners of the Liquid Co., Owl Liquors, Cliff's Liquors, Rodeo Plaza Liquors and Kelly Liquor Barn have teamed up as plaintiffs fighting the ban, and they're hoping to get a judgment before the ordinance prohibiting carry-out sales in packages smaller than 8 ounces is to go into effect. In part, they argue that  the city has arbitrarily singled out one product, and that the ban would hurt businesses' bottom line.

Attorneys and owners contacted by SFR didn't immediately reply to requests for comment, but customer Franco Diocanni, 50, held little back as he walked into Kelly at Siler and Cerrillos roads.

"I've heard that people are already starting to drink the big bottles and the pints now," says Diocanni. "So what do you think is worse? We should be able to drink the little ones. The city has no right to take them away from us. With the little ones, you can always drink a glass of juice or water with it, and the alcohol won't take effect for at least 45 minutes."


At the heart of the issue is that the tiny bottles only cost as little as 99 cents, while a pint of vodka, say, costs over $4. A few liquor store clerks, when questioned, said there's no doubt that some people can only afford the smaller bottles, and that's why they end up buying them.

But city officials maintain the ban is not a matter of clamping down on boozers so much as it is to just control the litter. Which is why, by a 7-2 vote in early April, the Santa Fe City Council approved the ban, in the same spirit that it approved a ban on plastic bags nearly 14 months ago and stopped the sales of minis along Airport Road before that.

And after the recent citywide ordinance was passed, the city, in a pre-emptive strike to avoid any legal delays, filed a motion for declaratory judgment in late May, asking the district court to be aware of a possible lawsuit coming down the pike on behalf of a coalition of liquor stores.

And that occurred in the fourth week of July, when the stores, represented by lawyers from the Montgomery and Andrews firm, entered the legal arena with the argument that if it the ban were statewide, then the citywide ban would make more sense in the larger argument. But because the ban is just local, it has no merit.

Walker says a few more legal briefs are expected before October, mostly likely the counterpoint against the city's most recent motion for dismissal.

As it stands now, liquor stores have until Oct. 8, Walker says, to clear their shelves.

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