Chester County Common Pleas Judge Edward Griffith has poured Chester County Hospital’s hopes for a massive upscale fundraiser down the drain — along with the more-than-1,300 bottles of valuable confiscated wines he just ordered to be destroyed rather than donated to charity.

Griffith’s decision hinged on an interpretation of a 1930s law written in the wake of Prohibition.

“The Legislature made no provision for the sale of condemned alcohol in any context, including a wine auction or other fundraising activities to serve the charitable works of a hospital,” he in a Daily Local News Report. The verdict went against a recommendation by none other than Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board Attorney Faith Smith Diehl.

“While we agree with Ms. Diehl that such use of condemned wine would serve a good and noble purpose, the PLCB can only regulate that which is permitted under the Liquor Code,” Griffith noted. “Since the Liquor Code makes no provision to condemned wine to be sold for any purpose, the wine may not be delivered to a hospital for sale.”

He further attributed the allowed “use” of confiscated liquor to the limited scope of medical purposes, which would have been more relevant nearly a century ago than it is today.

Read more about the decision in the Daily Local News here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of the wine’s origins — an illegal wine-selling business run by a Tredyffrin couple — here and here.

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