Comments on: Drunk drivers who sue over their accidents, cont’d

By: a_random_guy

a_random_guy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:01:24 +0000

Really, dram-shop laws make little sense, and for lots of reasons. Here are three:

(a) You cannot easily tell when someone is over the legal limit. Especially people who drink regularly have a high tolerance, and intoxication does not show.

(b) You have no idea what the person is going to do when they leave your premises. If someone has no intention of driving themselves home, there is no problem. Why you be responsible for knowing your customers’ intentions?

(c) This is part of the idiotic trend of the last decades: everything is somebody else’s fault. Your customers are all grown up now. They are the ones drinking alcohol. They are responsible for their actions.

IMHO, the main reason that dram-shop laws came into existence was the search for deeper pockets to sue.

By: Ron Miler

Ron Miler — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:21:09 +0000

Again, REM, you can’t make up your own facts. There is no trend towards tougher (or weaker) dram shop laws. You want to reestablish traditions that never existed. The reality is that there are far more curbs on personal injury case and there has been no meaningful change in dram shop laws. We can argue over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but, again, we can’t argue over simply facts.

By: J.T. Wenting

J.T. Wenting — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:41:11 +0000

“’ve lived in countries that take contributory negligence to what we would see as an extreme…

Your parked car was hit? If only you’d parked around the corner, it wouldn’t have been. The car that hit you was in the wrong lane? Pity you didn’t start out sooner or later; the accident would have been avoided.”

Sounds like the Netherlands, where a law like that was in place.
Drunk cyclist hits a legally parked car, at night on an unlit street he’s riding along with no lights of his own.
Judge decides the owner of the car is responsible for all damages including the medical bills of the cyclist because by law cars are always at fault for accidents involving cars and cyclists (apparently even if the car is parked, in a marked parking spot, and noone’s sitting in it).
That law was changed however, now the car has to be in traffic for it to apply…

By: J.T. Wenting

J.T. Wenting — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:37:29 +0000

“Do you really believe the victims of drunk driving accidents shouldn’t be able to sue bars that serve visibly intoxicated individuals? ”

yes. You and you alone are responsible for your binge drinking. What’s next, you going to sue Jack Daniels for them not preventing you from buying those 20 bottles you stockpiled over a period of 2 months before you downed them all and ended up in the ER with alcohol induced coma?
‘Cause that’s the logical conclusion if you claim that those selling you the booze are responsible for what happens with you after you drink it.

By: DEM

DEM — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:09:02 +0000

Ron, criticizing my syle of argumentation is a poor substitute for addressing the substance of it. Anyway, I’d be a lot more confident in our alleged “wisdom” in line-drawing if we weren’t already operating in a world where the legal practice of serving alcohol to adults can lead to ruinous tort liability for the criminal acts of third parties — something that probably would have been considered “crazy” years ago. Not to mention that the plaintiffs’ bar clearly has zero interest in drawing a reasonable line. They want to draw as large a circle as possible that encompasses every potential deep pocket. And in thousdands upon thousands of tort cases, they need only a handful of unwise judges to fall for it. Alas, there is no shortage.

If you had a limiting principle in mind here, one might expect you to offer it up. As it happens, you seem to be saying that hopefully someone will think of something at some future date. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

By: Hugo S. Cunningham

Hugo S. Cunningham — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:42:28 +0000

I agree with most of the posters here who believe a drunk driver should not profit from his own misconduct. I am more sympathetic to dram-shop suits by victims of drunk drivers, however. Admittedly, the dram shop’s guilt doesn’t usually rise to the level of outright criminality. But if dram shop liability is a “cost of doing business” for which insurance is bought, dram shops that effectively combine assertive employees and social atmosphere to reduce drunk driving will gain a major cost advantage over their competition.

By: Flemur

Flemur — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:54:15 +0000

Do you really believe the victims of drunk driving accidents shouldn’t be able to sue bars that serve visibly intoxicated individuals?

Yes.

By: Ron Miller

Ron Miller — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:54:10 +0000

Again, DEM, I’m not a huge fan of your rhetoric. You don’t need to use this hyperbole to make your point. George Will had a quote on this, saying that life is lived on a slippery slope. Taxation could become confiscation, police could become Gestapos. But the benefits of police and taxation make us willing to risk that we have the wisdom to know where to draw the line.

Finding a crazy place at bottom of the cliff is not furthering your argument.

By: DEM

DEM — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:23:30 +0000

Should we go a step further and prohibit the sale of 6 packs unless the buyer signs a sworn affidavit that he will not drink all 6 bottles in one evening? Also, it seems that liquor shouldn’t be sold at retail in anything other than 3 ounce servings (one per customer per day, of course). If we’re going to blithely dismiss individual responsibility and liberty so easily, let’s at least be thorough about it.

By: mike

mike — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:28:54 +0000

If the bar employees hold you down and pour alcohol down your throat, then yes liability, Short of that and I say no liability.