There are a few issues that you should understand with regard to a person’s potential liability for serving liquor to someone who causes injuries to another. First, the laws in the states vary widely. The first distinction we need to make is between business establishments that sell or serve liquor and noncommercial people who serve liquor at a private party or in their homes to guests. I will call the first group “sellers” and the second group “hosts.”
Some states allow sellers and hosts to be sued for personal injuries caused by someone whom they served if the alcohol was a factor in causing injuries to third parties. Some states allow suits against sellers but not hosts or vice versa.
Further, with regard to sellers, many states do not allow suits against hosts or sellers but will allow a suit against a seller if the seller serves someone who is underage and/or continues to serve someone who is of legal age but is clearly already intoxicated and that person causes personal injuries as a result of the intoxication.
For example, if a 19-year-old is negligently served alcohol at a bar and, as a result of intoxication, wrecks his car and hurts someone, the bar may be sued in some states. But it may not be negligent if the underage patron appears to be of legal age and has a fake ID that the bartender could not reasonably have known was fake.
Similarly, if a patron is clearly intoxicated and the bar continues to serve him or her, the bar may be sued in some states if the patron then causes injuries as a result of the increased intoxication.
In order to sue the bar, the injuries must be sustained as a result of actions by the defendant which are caused by the intoxication. Thus, if a bar serves a minor who wrecks because the wheel falls off his car and the evidence proves that there was nothing he could have done to prevent the accident whether he was drunk or sober, then the intoxication did not cause the accident and the bar would not be liable.
Another issue that sometimes comes up involves passengers who give alcohol or drugs to the driver. Some jurisdictions do not allow passengers to be sued for contributing to the intoxication of the driver. Some do. Some allow the passenger to be sued only if the passenger gives alcohol or drugs to the driver while they are traveling in the vehicle (in other words, not if they gave it to the driver before the journey in the vehicle began).
However, some states will allow suit to be brought against the owner of a car who allows someone to drive their car when they know or should know under the circumstances that the person is intoxicated. This is called “negligent entrustment.”
If you were injured, you might sue the car owner for negligently entrusting an intoxicated person with the vehicle.
In a negligent entrustment case, it is irrelevant whether the owner is in the car or not at the time of the accident; the issue is whether the owner knew it was unsafe to let the person drive his vehicle and allowed it anyway.
Negligent entrustment is not necessarily limited to situations involving alcohol. It might also be negligent to entrust a vehicle to a person you know is an extremely reckless driver.
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Webworldarticles.com is a free articles resource thus practically any visitor can submit an article. However if you notice any copyrighted material, please contact us and we will remove the article(s) in discussion right away.
This article was sent to us by:
Debbie Freeman at
02022010
1. Property Damage in car accidents
All articles in this directory are property of their respective authors. Additionally, read our Privacy Policy
© 2010 WebWorldarticles.com - All Rights Reserved. Partners: Gunblade Saga