Request By:
Mr. Charles T. King
Director of Security
Ken Bar Inn, Inc.
P.O. Box 66
Gilbertsville, Kentucky 42044
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: James S. Goldberg, Assistant Attorney General
This letter is in response to your correspondence of May 3, 1977 in which you state that the privately owned resort of Ken Bar Inn, Inc. has been frequently visited over the last two months by several local deputy sheriffs, who enter the Inn's private banquet facilities and harass the Inn's guests. Therefore, you ask:
1) Are banquet rooms of the Inn that are rented to certain organizations and in which access to these rooms is restricted solely to each particular organization considered to be public or private in nature?
2) If these banquet rooms are considered private, can members of each organization bring in liquor for their own use?
3) If these rooms are considered private, do law enforcement officers have the right to enter these facilities, take pictures, confiscate items and in general, harass the members of that organization?
In that regard we first observe that Marshall County, in which Ken Bar Inn is located, is dry territory.
In KRS 525.010 (3), a "public place" is defined to mean:
"[A] place to which the public or a substantial group of persons has access and includes but is not limited to highways, transportation facilities, schools, places of amusements, parks, places of business, playgrounds and hallways, lobbies and other portions of apartment houses and hotels not constituting rooms or apartments designed for actual residence. An act is deemed to occur in a public place if it produces its offensive or proscribed consequences in a public place." (Emphasis added).
Therefore, in answer to your first question, it is the position of this Office that any of the above described banquest rooms constitute a "public place," under Kentucky law.
We trust that our answer to your first question automatically disposes of your second and third question, as well.
We hope that this opinion will satisfactorily answer all your questions. If we can be of any further service, please do not hesitate to call upon us.