Four Tickets Outside the Tutwiler

Birmingham, Alabama, 1 December 1967. Outside the Tutwiler Hotel, police officer N. G. Hopkins asked Bobby Joe Estell whether he had tickets to the game. Estell said he did and led the officers a short distance away. Hopkins's partner, Officer D. R. Trimm, asked for four seats together; Estell wanted $25 a ticket and handed over four. When Trimm held out the money and Estell reached for it, Trimm pulled it back, identified himself and arrested him. The printed price on the tickets was $6.00. Estell was charged under two sections of the Birmingham city code: one made it unlawful to sell tickets above the published price scale, the other made it unlawful to buy tickets for resale or to sell them above the promoter's set price. He was convicted in the city's lower court and appealed to the circuit court, where he argued the ordinances were unconstitutional; the judge overruled that objection, the parties stipulated the facts rather than calling witnesses, and the judge found him guilty. On further appeal Estell contended that capping the resale price of a football ticket was an arbitrary interference with a lawful private business, outside the city's police power, and that a sporting event is not a business 'affected with the public interest'.