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Friday, June 16, 2006

Law - IU Law Prof. Tanford takes wine shipping issues to California

Here are some quotes from a story yesterday in the San Franscisco Chronicle:

California residents may be able to order wine from retail stores around the country if several lawsuits filed in the state are successful. * * *

According to J. Alexander Tanford, a law professor at Indiana University, parties in the Los Angeles case have already presented a judge with alternative proposals for dealing with the issue.

"I gather that the California attorney general has already conceded that California's law is unconstitutional under Granholm (the May 2005 Supreme Court decision on direct shipping) because it allows in-state retailers to ship but not out of state," Tanford said. "As usual, the fight is over what to do about it."

Unlike the other California complaints, the case filed in Los Angeles challenges laws preventing citizens in other states from sending wine into California.

Tanford said he and Indianapolis attorney Robert Epstein, who together filed the suit in Michigan that led to the Supreme Court's ruling, are continuing to look at wine shipping laws that states have enacted in their most recent legislative sessions. Some have created yearly production limits on eligibility for direct sales -- limits that typically happen to be just a bit higher than the capacity of the largest in-state winery, Tanford says.

Some states have also limited shipping of wine to on-site purchases. Tanford pointed out that the only wineries "on-site" in a given state will be local wineries.

"There are 20 other states with case limits, production limits, on-site sales limits, or ridiculously high fees for situations that will have the practical effect of continuing to keep most out-of-state wineries out of the market," said Tanford. "We are looking through the laws of those states, and there will be litigation in some of them," he said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 16, 2006 07:21 PM
Posted to General Law Related