The State - News from Jan. 3, 1986

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. military installations in California that serve liquor to obviously intoxicated minors cannot be held liable if the drunken service person then kills or injures someone while driving. Under a 1982 state law, victims or survivors of people injured or killed by drunk drivers can sue bar owners if they can prove that liquor was served to clearly intoxicated minors. The federal court, in a case involving an intoxicated teen-age Marine served at the Concord Naval Station enlisted men’s club, said the parents of a 17-year-old girl killed in a 1983 motorcycle accident could not sue because military installations are exempt from the state law. A lawyer for the parents called the ruling “a travesty.”