Seesaw Legislation on Drunk Driving

Don’t drink and drive. That’s a message that bears repeating this time of year, with the holiday season in full force and New Year’s Eve parties only a week away.

If you drink, drive and cause an accident, the legal system is designed to make you pay for your mistake. As a result of stricter criminal laws, you may find yourself spending the holidays in jail, and even when you get out, a civil lawsuit by the injured parties will be waiting on your doorstep. You could pay for your indiscretion for quite some time.

Involvement of Others

But are you the only one who will have to pay the costs of the injuries you caused? What about the bartender, the liquor store owner or the party host who supplied you with the booze? Aren’t they the indirect cause of the accident, especially if they served you alcohol when you were already tipsy?

They may bear some responsibility for your conduct (depending on your philosophical bent), but under the law as it now stands in California, the suppliers of alcohol are generally not held liable for any damages stemming from an accident caused by a drunk driver.

That hasn’t always been the case. In fact, the law has seesawed back and forth. In the 1950s, the California Supreme Court decided that it was the “voluntary consumption, not the sale or gift of intoxicating liquor, that is the proximate (legal) cause of injury from its use.” So, only the drunk driver, not the bartender, was held legally responsible.

Nearly 20 years later, at a time when the California Supreme Court was expanding civil liability on many fronts, the court began to chip away at the civil immunity established for those who sold and served alcoholic beverages.

First, in a 1971 case, the court said a commercial seller of alcohol could be held liable for selling drinks to an obviously intoxicated person if that person later plowed his car into an unsuspecting pedestrian or another driver.

Finally, in 1978, the court extended liability to “social hosts” who serve liquor to an obviously intoxicated person. That meant if a friend came to your house for a barbecue and had a few too many beers, and you gave him a few more, you were going to pay for any damage he caused, whether it was in the form of hospital bills or a bent fender.

“Service of alcoholic beverages to an obviously intoxicated person by one who knows that such intoxicated person intends to drive a motor vehicle creates a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury to those on the highway,” the court said.

“Simply put,” the court added, “one who serves alcoholic beverages under such circumstances fails to exercise reasonable care” and should pay for the damages resulting from their lack of care.

An End to the Rule

Later that same year, the state legislature put an end to this court-created rule of liability and passed legislation expressly designed to “abrogate” the Supreme Court rulings.

Under the 1978 law, “no social host who furnishes alcoholic beverages to any person shall be held legally accountable for damages” from injury or death caused by the intoxicated person. This is true even if a party host serves drinks to an obviously intoxicated person, even a minor, according to recent court interpretations of the statute.

The legislation also provided broad protection to commercial sellers of alcohol, such as tavern keepers and liquor store owners, with only one specific exception. If a licensed seller of liquor furnishes it to an obviously intoxicated minor, the seller could be liable for the injuries caused by the drunken minor.

Lawyers attacked the constitutionality of the new law, but the state Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional, saying that the legislature had the authority to decide that it was “unfair to require the provider (of alcoholic beverages) to share both the supervisory responsibility and the legal blame with the consumer, whose voluntary consumption . . . is perhaps the more direct and immediate cause of any consequent injuries.”

Tried to Circumvent

Many inventive lawyers have tried unsuccessfully to circumvent the legislation by contending that liability should be imposed for some reason other than serving drinks--for instance, that a host should pay damages for inviting a guest who later drank too much, or for having asked an intoxicated guest to leave, knowing that the guest would drive home.

However, where the social host knows that because of some exceptional physical or mental disability, a guest should not be served alcoholic beverages, then, at least one court of appeal has suggested that liability may be imposed on the host.

In addition, it is possible that a company may be liable for injuries caused by its drunken employee, if the employee is acting within the scope of his employment and was provided the drinks at a company-sponsored function that he was required to attend.

So the law does not demand that you call a taxi for your drunken friend. But common sense does.