Request By:
Mr. Jackie Ray Cooper
Lewis County Judge/Executive
Vanceburg, Kentucky 41179
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
KRS 231.020 requires that no place of entertainment shall be operated outside the corporate limits of a city unless its owner or manager has a permit, issued by the county judge/executive, granting him the privilege to operate such place of entertainment.
A man in Lewis County (unincorporated part of the county) owns a grocery store and has installed some game tables, such as pool tables, space invaders, pin ball machines, etc. You want to know if he needs a permit.
KRS 231.010 defines "place of entertainment" , as follows:
As used in this chapter, "place of entertainment" means a roadhouse, place offering intoxicating or nonintoxicating drinks for sale, tourist camp or place of public entertainment at which people assemble to eat, drink, dance, bathe, or engage in any game or amusement, or any place having therein or thereon any person engaging in the practice of being a medium, clairvoyant, soothsayer, palmist, phrenologist, spiritualist, or like activity, or one who, with or without the use of cards, crystal ball, tea leaves, or any other object or device, engages in the practice of telling the fortune of another; but this last clause shall not be construed to apply to persons pretending to tell fortunes as part of any play, exhibition, fair or amateur show presented or offered by any religious, charitable, or benevolent institution. It shall not mean a private home at which bona fide guests are entertained, drive-in theaters, place of business conducted only as filling stations for motor vehicles or grocery stores, nor transient or temporary entertainment such as circuses, carnivals and county fairs." (Emphasis added).
Under the literal language of the statute, the grocery store in question is the site, not only of a grocery store operation, but of a public place of entertainment where people gather to engage in certain games or amusements, such as pool tables, space invaders, and pin ball machines.
Under the exception, the statute does not include places of business "conducted only as grocery stores." (Emphasis added). But the place in question is not conducted only as a grocery store. Therefore, it does not fall within the exception. Indeed, the operation of these items of games and amusements clearly brings such operations outside of the exception.
It is axiomatic, as Judge Thomas wrote in Wheeler v. Board of Com'rs of City of Hopkinsville, 245 Ky. 388, 53 S.W.2d 740 (1932), that legislative intent and purpose are to be gathered primarily from words used.
The answer to your question is that under the facts given, the place of business described is subject to the owner's getting a permit under KRS 231.020.