Accountability widens for drunken driving
Liability for post-imbibing accidents can fall not only on bars and restaurants, but on hosts of private parties as well
Just in time for the New Year, the New Mexico Supreme Court issued a new opinion reminding us what can happen to restaurant and bar owners, and also the hosts of private parties, when their guests have one too many. Or many too many.
Nine and a half years ago, Quin Sanchez and Mary Ann Madrid had drinks at the Chili’s Bar and Grill in Los Lunas, according to the allegations in Ms. Madrid’s subsequent lawsuit. Sanchez was supposedly intoxicated when he started up his motorcycle in the Chili’s parking lot, but Madrid hopped on back anyway.
They rode down N.M. 47 to Rio Communities, where the drunken driver of a van, Jacob Williams, blew through the stop sign at Goodman Avenue directly in front of them. The motorcycle T-boned the van, instantly killing Sanchez and grievously injuring Madrid.
Jacob Williams pleaded no contest to charges arising from the crash. If his name sounds familiar to you, it’s because soon after he finished serving his time, he drove drunk again and hit another Valencia County motorcyclist. Just as before, he killed the driver and seriously injured the passenger. Williams is once again in a New Mexico prison.
Madrid sued Williams for causing the crash, but prisoners tend to have little money. So she also sued Chili’s parent corporation, Brinker Restaurant Corp., and a particular Chili’s employee, alleging they had “served alcohol to Sanchez to the point of intoxication,” with the result that he was unable to avoid Williams’ van. The argument was that, if Sanchez had been stonecold sober, he could have reacted in time to swerve or lay down the bike and maybe the crash would have been less catastrophic.
After reviewing the evidence, the district judge concluded that no reasonable jury could find that Chili’s was the cause of the victims’ injuries. He granted summary judgment in favor of Brinker and the Chili’s employee — the parties with the insurance policy that was the real target of the suit. The Court of Appeals affirmed in a painstaking, unpublished opinion. But earlier this month, the Supreme Court reversed, finding the evidence of causation sufficient to submit the case to a jury.
Prior to 1982, New Mexico bars could never be held responsible for deaths and injuries caused by their drunken patrons. In 1966, for instance, the state Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against Budagher’s Bar, an old-time roadhouse located at the traditional halfway point between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
One of the bar’s patrons, while “obviously under the severe influence” of liquor, drove away at closing time and killed another driver. Our Supreme Court observed that, at common law, pubs were never liable for harms caused by drunken customers. Of course, the common law developed long before the automobile age. Nonetheless, if such “dramshop liability” was to be imposed in New Mexico, the court announced with the air of standing resolutely on principle, it would have to be imposed by the Legislature. “We are not at liberty to judicially authorize” such actions, which are “within the province of the legislature.”
Eleven years later, the court considered a case against the owners of the Copper Penny Lounge in Raton, which happened to be owned by a politically well-connected family, the Marchiondos. Once again, the Supreme Court refused to hold the bar responsible for serving an intoxicated patron who drove away and killed an innocent person. But this time, instead of saying the matter was within the province of the Legislature, the court merely said it was “hesitant” to act, while warning it would do so if the Legislature didn’t get a move on.
By 1982, the court’s patience was at an end. When presented with yet another lawsuit involving essentially identical facts, the court overruled its earlier decisions and announced that, from now on, the victim of a drunken driver can sue the restaurant or bar responsible for the driver’s sloshed condition.
That’s the nice thing about standing on principle: You can always swap it out for another principle later.
The next year, the Legislature finally acted. State law already prohibited licensees — bars, restaurants, package stores — from selling alcohol to intoxicated persons. The 1983 act authorized civil lawsuits for deaths, injuries and property damage directly caused by such unlawful sales, while also erecting a fairly high evidentiary
standard that must be met to support the lawsuit.
With its decision earlier this month, the Supreme Court ratcheted down the standard of proof, but in an ambiguous way and without acknowledging what it was doing. Under the statute, a licensee is liable only for serving an obviously intoxicated person, while the court’s new test for causation asks what a stonecold sober driver would have done instead. There’s a big intermediate zone, occupied by most bar patrons, between complete sobriety and obvious intoxication. The two legal standards are staked at opposite ends of the intermediate zone. We’ll have to see how the discrepancy plays out in future cases.
The case twice emphasizes that Quin Sanchez failed to anticipate the van would blow through the stop sign. A sober driver, the court held, would have expected it. While it’s not exactly news that many New Mexico drivers ignore stop signs and red lights, it’s still a bit startling to find the Supreme Court treating it as normal.
The 1983 statute reaches private social hosts, too. Party-givers can, in some circumstances, be held liable if a guest gets drunk, climbs behind the wheel and causes a crash. For a social host to be found liable, there must be proof that “the alcoholic beverages were provided recklessly in disregard of the rights of others.” That’s a daunting mouthful and a high legal hurdle, even if no one can be sure exactly what it means in concrete terms. But whatever it means, don’t do it at your New Year party.