Fish Heads’ appeals go belly up

PALMER — The man who once ran the Fish Heads bar attached to the bowling alley in Wasilla has lost a lawsuit over the revocation of his liquor license.

Bob Stevens’ liquor license was revoked in 2006. The borough had complained to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which oversees such licenses, saying Stevens disturbed the neighborhood with noise and an unlicensed Chippendale’s dance show.

In 2006, Stevens appealed both a handful of noise violations and the license revocation. Both the Alaska Court of Appeals and Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler upheld the noise convictions. The revocation appeal was outstanding until this week.

At Tuesday’s Borough Assembly meeting, Borough Attorney Nick Spiropoulos said he’d just that day received a copy of the denial of Stevens’ appeal of the license revocation.

“Yes, it’s still going on,” Spiropoulos told the body.

He noted that the ruling judge, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Sen K. Tan, had used the words “quite interesting,” “certainly interesting” and “curious” in his decision. That sort of talk usually indicates the court is in uncharted water, Spiropoulos said. The attorney said the next stop is the Alaska State Supreme Court and he’d be waiting to see if Stevens takes that step.

In his ruling, Tan broke Stevens’ arguments against the revocation into three parts.

First, he said, Stevens argued that the borough had sent an employee of their planning and land use department to protest his license renewal, an action that should have been taken by the assembly.

“It was clearly the intent of the Borough Assembly to broadly delegate the authority to file protests on the planning and land use office,” Tan wrote.

The second issue Stevens raised, according to Tan, was which party had the burden of proof. In order for the ABC Board to revoke a license on a complaint like this, the board has to find that the request was not arbitrary capricious or unreasonable.

Stevens said the borough had to show they were not acting arbitrarily capricious or unreasonable, the borough said Stevens had to prove they were.

After reviewing case law, Tan decided, “the burden is not on the Mat-Su Borough to prove that the protest was not arbitrary, was not capricious, and was reasonable. Rather, it is up to the party seeking the license or continued operation to carry the burden of proof.”

Tan outlined Stevens’ third point as essentially claiming that the borough’s laws were illegal — that the adult entertainment ordinance didn’t apply to the Chippendale’s show and anyway both that ordinance and the noise ordinance violated his constitutional right to freedom of speech.

In his opinion, Tan basically deferred to the ruling of the other two courts who upheld the convictions.

“Those convictions stand as they have been affirmed by the Court of Appeals. Thus, Mr. Stevens is estopped at this time from denying that he violated the ordinance.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.