Case Title: Faircloth v. Main Street Entertainment, Inc., etc.

Citation: 

Docket Number: SC2022-0910

State: florida

Court: Florida Supreme Court

Date: 2024-03-07T00:00:00Z

Document:
Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC2022-0910 
____________ 
 
GUARDIANSHIP OF JACQUELYN ANNE FAIRCLOTH,  
Petitioner, 
 
vs. 
 
MAIN STREET ENTERTAINMENT, INC., etc., 
Respondent. 
 
March 7, 2024 
 
MUÑIZ, C.J. 
We accepted jurisdiction to review the decision of the First 
District Court of Appeal in Main Street Entertainment, Inc. v. 
Faircloth, 342 So. 3d 232 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022).  There the district 
court passed on and certified the following question as one of great 
public importance:  
Whether the comparative fault statute, section 768.81, 
Florida Statutes, applies to tort actions involving the 
dram-shop exception contained in section 768.125, 
Florida Statutes, against a vendor who willfully and 
unlawfully sold alcohol to an underage patron, resulting 
in the patron’s intoxication and related injury? 
 
Id. at 249. 
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To unpack the certified question, we note that section 768.811 
says that percentage-of-fault-based liability, rather than joint and 
several liability, governs a “negligence action.”  § 768.81, Fla. Stat.  
In turn, section 768.125 permits liability when a person “willfully 
and unlawfully” provides alcohol to an underage patron and 
intoxication and injury ensue.  § 768.125, Fla. Stat.  The issue is 
whether the action permitted by section 768.125 is a “negligence 
action,” even though the statute requires willful misconduct. 
Without approving all the district court’s reasoning, we agree 
that the answer to the certified question is yes: the action permitted 
by the underage drinker exception in section 768.125 is a 
negligence action for purposes of the comparative fault statute, 
section 768.81. 
I 
 
Late one night in November 2014, a speeding pickup truck 
struck 18-year-old Jacquelyn Faircloth as she crossed a street on 
foot.  The driver of the truck was Devon Dwyer, age 20.  Both Dwyer 
 
 
1.  All statutory citations in this opinion refer to the 2014 
edition of the Florida Statutes, the year the accident occurred. 
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and Faircloth were intoxicated at the time of the collision.  
Tragically, Faircloth suffered catastrophic and permanent injuries.  
 
Faircloth’s guardianship later sued Potbelly’s and Cantina 
101, two Tallahassee bars, seeking money damages.  Without 
explicitly invoking section 768.125, the complaint alleged that 
Potbelly’s and Cantina 101 had “willfully and unlawfully” served 
alcoholic beverages to Dwyer and Faircloth, respectively.  The 
complaint said that each of the underage drinkers then became 
intoxicated, and that their intoxication caused the accident.  
Dwyer’s intoxication impaired his driving, the complaint said, and 
Faircloth’s intoxication led her to step into the street in front of 
Dwyer’s oncoming truck. 
 
Potbelly’s responded with a comparative fault defense, arguing 
that any fault attributable to Faircloth should reduce the bar’s 
liability.  But the trial court rejected that defense before trial.  The 
court decided that, since section 768.125 requires willful 
misconduct, the guardianship’s lawsuit was not a “negligence 
action” for purposes of the comparative fault statute.  Indeed, the 
trial court ruled that the lawsuit was based on an intentional tort. 
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Potbelly’s stipulated at trial that it had willfully and unlawfully 
served alcoholic beverages to Dwyer.  The bar’s defense focused on 
the causation element of the guardianship’s claim.  Potbelly’s 
argued that Dwyer was not intoxicated at the time of the accident—
and that, even if he was, his intoxication did not cause the collision.  
Potbelly’s maintained that the accident was unavoidable once 
Faircloth darted in front of Dwyer’s oncoming truck. 
 
The jury rejected Potbelly’s’ arguments and found the bar 
liable.  So the trial court entered final judgment for $28.6 million 
against Potbelly’s and Cantina 101, jointly and severally.  Cantina 
101 had defaulted and did not appear at trial. 
 
Over a dissent, the First District reversed the judgment on 
appeal.  The district court held that the trial court should have 
allowed Potbelly’s to assert a comparative fault defense under 
section 768.81.  After reviewing the background of section 768.125 
and this Court’s precedents, the district court concluded: “Following 
the statute’s enactment, selling or furnishing alcohol to a minor 
must be done willfully for the vendor to be liable, but the vendor is 
liable in negligence, not an intentional tort.”  Main St. Ent., Inc., 342 
So. 3d at 235. 
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The First District then decided how fault could be allocated in 
this case: “We hold that Potbelly’s may raise a comparative 
negligence defense between itself and, ultimately, Cantina 101 as 
derivatively liable entities; not between Potbelly’s and its underage 
patron [Dwyer]; and not between Potbelly’s and Cantina 101’s 
underage patron [Faircloth].”  Id. at 237.  The court reasoned that, 
as “derivatively liable” entities, each bar was responsible for all the 
fault attributable to the underage drinker it had served.  Id. at 236-
37.   
 
We agree with the First District that the underage drinker 
exception in section 768.125 permits a negligence action.  But we 
neither approve nor disapprove the district court’s “derivative 
liability” analysis and its conclusion that liability cannot be 
apportioned between a selling bar and the underage drinker who 
becomes intoxicated and injures himself or others.  The latter 
issues are outside the scope of the certified question, and we will 
not address them further. 
II 
 
Everyone agrees that the underage drinker exception in 
section 768.125 includes a willfulness requirement.  The 
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guardianship insists this means that the action permitted by 
section 768.125 is not a negligence action.  We disagree. 
A 
The common law traditionally held that “a commercial vendor 
of alcoholic beverages could not be liable for the negligent sale of 
those beverages when either the purchaser or third persons were 
injured as a result of their consumption.”  Ellis v. N.G.N. of Tampa, 
Inc., 586 So. 2d 1042, 1044 (Fla. 1991).  Courts usually reasoned 
that the drinker—rather than the alcohol provider—should be 
liable.  But seminal decisions in 1959 by the New Jersey Supreme 
Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit kicked 
off a national trend toward expanded common law liability in this 
area. 
By 1967, Florida courts had set aside the common law’s no-
liability-for-providers rule when injuries stemmed from the illegal 
sale of alcohol to underage drinkers.  First, in Davis v. 
Shiappacossee, 155 So. 2d 365 (Fla. 1963), our Court found a bar 
liable to the parents of a 16-year-old boy who had purchased 
alcohol from the bar, become intoxicated, driven his car into an oak 
tree, and died.  Then, in Prevatt v. McLennan, 201 So. 2d 780 (Fla. 
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2d DCA 1967), the Second District Court of Appeal found a tavern 
liable to a third party shot by an underage drinker to whom the 
tavern had sold alcohol. 
The courts in Davis and Prevatt grounded liability on a theory 
of negligence per se.  Davis, 155 So. 2d at 367; Prevatt, 201 So. 2d 
at 781.  That theory derives a governing standard of care from 
statutes that do not on their face create tort liability.  A “plaintiff 
who claims that the defendant was negligent per se in violating a 
safety statute is not claiming a new species of tort but simply 
asserting an ordinary negligence claim.”  Dan B. Dobbs et al., The 
Law of Torts § 148, at 467 (2d ed. 2011).  Like Potbelly’s here, the 
defendant bars in Davis and Prevatt had violated section 562.11, 
Florida Statutes, which makes it a misdemeanor to provide 
alcoholic beverages to underage persons.   
Establishing negligence per se satisfies only one element of the 
plaintiff’s negligence cause of action—the breach element.  The 
plaintiff must also establish “1) that he is of a class the statute was 
intended to protect; 2) that he suffered injury of the type the statute 
was designed to prevent; and 3) that violation of the statute was the 
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proximate cause of the injury.”  Bryant v. Jax Liquors, 352 So. 2d 
542, 544 (Fla. 1st DCA 1977). 
The pre-1980 case law in this area further required the 
plaintiff to prove that the defendant knew or should have known 
that it was selling alcohol to a minor.  In its seminal Rappaport 
decision, for example, the New Jersey Supreme Court stressed that 
liability would not attach to “prudent licensees who do not know or 
have reason to believe that the patron is a minor or is intoxicated 
when served.”  Rappaport v. Nichols, 156 A.2d 1, 10 (N.J. 1959).  
Similarly, in Davis, this Court found liability where the defendant 
had “made no effort” to ensure the lawfulness of the sale of alcohol, 
even though “[f]rom their ages it must have been apparent to 
anyone who bothered to look that the purchasers were but boys.”  
155 So. 2d at 367; see also Migliore v. Crown Liquors of Broward, 
Inc., 448 So. 2d 978, 978 (Fla. 1984) (finding liability where the 
plaintiff alleged that the defendant bar “knew or should have known 
that” the purchaser was a minor); cf. Tamiami Gun Shop v. Klein, 
116 So. 2d 421, 422 (Fla. 1959) (illegal gun sale to “an obvious 
minor” was negligence per se). 
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B 
Such was the state of the common law in 1980, when the 
Legislature enacted section 768.125.  See ch. 80-37, § 1, Laws of 
Fla.  That statute reads: 
A person who sells or furnishes alcoholic beverages to a 
person of lawful drinking age shall not thereby become 
liable for injury or damage caused by or resulting from 
the intoxication of such person, except that a person who 
willfully and unlawfully sells or furnishes alcoholic 
beverages to a person who is not of lawful drinking age or 
who knowingly serves a person habitually addicted to the 
use of any or all alcoholic beverages may become liable 
for injury or damage caused by or resulting from the 
intoxication of such minor or person. 
 
§ 768.125, Fla. Stat.  We explained in Ellis that section 768.125 
“effectively codified the original common law rule absolving vendors 
from liability for sales,” subject to the two “exceptions” specified in 
the statute.  586 So. 2d at 1046. 
 
As to cases involving the illegal sale of alcohol to underage 
patrons, section 768.125 left the preexisting common law largely 
intact.  The statute did not create a new cause of action to address 
injuries flowing from such sales.  Migliore, 448 So. 2d at 980.  
Instead, with one qualification, section 768.125 assumed that the 
common law would continue to govern in this area.  This is evident 
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from the statute’s overall focus on limiting preexisting liability and 
from the text’s use of the phrase “may become liable,” suggesting 
qualified permission for continued application of the existing 
common-law framework.  See id. at 981 (“When the legislature 
enacted this statute it was presumed to be acquainted with the 
judicial decisions on this subject, including Davis and Prevatt.”). 
 
To be sure, section 768.125 did modify the common law by 
limiting liability to situations where the sale to an underage patron 
is done both “willfully” and “unlawfully.”  The “unlawfully” 
requirement brought nothing new—the negligence per se-based 
cases already required proof that the alcohol provider had violated 
section 562.11.  The term “willfully,” as used in section 768.125, 
simply means that the alcohol provider knew that the recipient was 
under age 21.  See Case v. Newman, 154 So. 3d 1151, 1153 (Fla. 
1st DCA 2014) (“willful” sale requires knowledge that the recipient 
is not of lawful drinking age); Tuttle v. Miami Dolphins, Ltd., 551 So. 
2d 477, 481 n.3 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988) (same); French v. City of W. 
Palm Beach, 513 So. 2d 1356, 1358 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987) (same); 
Publix Supermarkets, Inc. v. Austin, 658 So. 2d 1064, 1067 (Fla. 5th 
DCA 1995) (same).  District courts of appeal have held that the 
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seller’s knowledge can be proven through circumstantial evidence.  
See Gorman v. Albertson’s, Inc., 519 So. 2d 1119, 1120 (Fla. 2d DCA 
1988); Willis v. Strickland, 436 So. 2d 1011, 1012 (Fla. 5th DCA 
1983) (“Circumstantial evidence of such knowledge may consist of 
facts relating to the apparent age of a person.”). 
 
C 
 
This brings us to the guardianship’s argument that, by 
including a willfulness requirement, section 768.125 eliminated the 
preexisting negligence cause of action and replaced it with 
something other than a negligence action.  The negligence label 
matters, of course, because the guardianship seeks to avoid the 
application of the comparative fault statute, section 768.81(3).  That 
statute says: “In a negligence action, the court shall enter judgment 
against each party liable on the basis of such party’s percentage of 
fault and not on the basis of the doctrine of joint and several 
liability.”  § 768.81(3), Fla. Stat.  It “does not apply . . . to any action 
based upon an intentional tort.”  § 768.81(4), Fla. Stat.  
 
Under the comparative fault statute, a “negligence action” 
includes “a civil action for damages based upon a theory of 
negligence.”  § 768.81(1)(c), Fla. Stat.  The statute further instructs 
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that “[t]he substance of an action, not conclusory terms used by a 
party, determines whether an action is a negligence action.”  Id.  
 
The law of torts teaches that negligence is “conduct which falls 
below a standard established by the law for the protection of others 
against unreasonable risk of harm.”  William L. Prosser, Handbook 
of the Law of Torts § 31, at 146 (4th ed. 1971).  For negligence to be 
actionable, of course, the unreasonably dangerous conduct must 
result in injury to the plaintiff.  But “[i]n negligence, the actor does 
not desire to bring about the consequences which follow, nor does 
he know that they are substantially certain to occur, or believe that 
they will.”  Id. at 145. 
The relationship between the defendant’s conduct and the 
plaintiff’s injury distinguishes negligence from an intentional tort.  
Our Court has said that an intentional tort is “one in which the 
actor exhibits a deliberate intent to injure or engages in conduct 
which is substantially certain to result in injury or death.”  
D’Amario v. Ford Motor Co., 806 So. 2d 424, 438 (Fla. 2001), 
overruled by legislative action, ch. 2011-215, §§ 2-3, Laws of Fla.  
This tracks the most recent Restatement of Torts, which says: “In 
general, the intent required in order to show that the defendant's 
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conduct is an intentional tort is the intent to bring about harm 
(more precisely, to bring about the type of harm to an interest that 
the particular tort seeks to protect).”  Restatement (Third) of Torts: 
Phys. & Emot. Harm § 1, cmt. b (2010). 
 
Now consider section 768.125.  The statute’s willfulness 
requirement means that the plaintiff must prove the defendant 
knew that the purchaser was underage.  To that extent, the 
defendant’s misconduct is intentional.  But that is different from 
the type of intent that takes conduct out of the negligence realm 
and into the realm of an intentional tort.  “[I]ntentional conduct and 
even intentional risk-taking is analyzed under negligence rules 
unless the defendant has a purpose to invade the plaintiff’s legally 
protected interests or a certainty that such an invasion will occur.”  
Dobbs et al., supra, § 126, at 397; cf. Martin v. Herzog, 126 N.E. 
814, 815 (N.Y. 1920) (Cardozo, J.) (“By the very terms of the 
hypothesis, to omit, willfully or heedlessly, the safeguards 
prescribed by law for the benefit of another that he may be 
preserved in life or limb, is to fall short of the standard of diligence 
to which those who live in organized society are under a duty to 
conform.” (emphasis added)). 
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Viewed against the common law baseline, the willfulness 
requirement in section 768.125 does not change the basic 
relationship between the seller-defendant’s conduct and the 
plaintiff’s injury.  Instead, section 768.125 merely limits liability to 
a subset of the actors who could have been found liable under the 
preexisting negligence per se doctrine.  As we have explained, 
liability in those cases partly depended on proof that the defendant 
knew or should have known that the purchaser of alcohol was 
underage.  Section 768.125 retains negligence-based liability, but 
only for defendants who know that the purchaser is underage. 
 
Here, the guardianship did not allege that Potbelly’s intended 
harm to someone in Faircloth’s position or that the bar knew such 
harm was substantially certain to occur.  Potbelly’s’ willfulness 
flowed from its knowledge of Dwyer’s age—nothing more.  To prove 
Potbelly’s’ willfulness, an issue that was not disputed at trial, the 
guardianship relied entirely on a stipulation read to the jury on 
behalf of both parties at the start of the trial: 
Potbelly’s knew that Devon Dwyer was a minor and 
not of legal drinking age.  Potbelly’s had actual 
knowledge of Devon Dwyer’s age, and notwithstanding 
same, willfully and unlawfully furnished alcoholic 
beverages to him on the night of the subject accident. 
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In other words, Potbelly’s admitted to knowingly creating an 
unreasonable risk of harm.  That is negligence, not an intentional 
tort. 
III 
 
Our answer to the certified question is yes: the action 
permitted by the underage drinker exception in section 768.125 is a 
negligence action for purposes of the comparative fault statute, 
section 768.81.  We approve the district court’s decision to the 
extent it is consistent with our decision today.  We neither approve 
nor disapprove the district court’s conclusions about how fault is to 
be allocated among the bars and underage patrons involved in this 
case.  
 
It is so ordered. 
 
CANADY, COURIEL, GROSSHANS, FRANCIS, and SASSO, JJ., 
concur. 
LABARGA, J., dissents with an opinion. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
LABARGA, J., dissenting. 
 
Florida law specifically and unequivocally allows civil tort 
actions against vendors who—like Potbelly’s in this case—“willfully 
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and unlawfully sell[] or furnish[] alcoholic beverages to a person 
who is not of lawful drinking age.”  § 768.125, Fla. Stat. (emphasis 
added).  This statutory provision, which has been in existence for 
more than forty years, is one of two exceptions contained in what is 
referred to as the dram shop act.2  As noted in the dissent below, 
“the [d]ram [s]hop [a]ct is not intended in any way to reduce the 
liability of a vendor who willfully and unlawfully serves alcohol to 
underage patrons (or negligently serve[s] alcohol to habitual 
drunkards).”  Main Street Ent., Inc. v. Faircloth, 342 So. 3d 232, 247 
(Fla. 1st DCA 2022) (Makar, J., dissenting).  Rather, “[i]t ‘is meant 
to protect a class of persons, primarily juveniles who would buy 
alcoholic drinks’ from the deleterious consequences of 
unscrupulous vendors intentionally and unlawfully allowing 
underage drinking.”  Id. (quoting Booth v. Abbey Rd. Beef & Booze, 
Inc., 532 So. 2d 1288, 1290 (Fla. 4th DCA 1988)). 
 
 
2.  “ ‘Dram shop’ is an archaic phrase from the eighteenth 
century used to describe a ‘place where alcoholic beverages are 
sold; a bar or saloon.’ ”  Main St. Ent., Inc. v. Faircloth, 342 So. 3d 
232, 239 n.1 (Fla. 1st DCA 2022) (Makar, J., dissenting) (quoting 
Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019)). 
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In this case, we have a vendor, Potbelly’s, asserting that 
(1) despite having willfully and unlawfully furnished alcoholic 
beverages to a person it knew to be underage—which resulted in 
intoxication and injury—and (2) despite the traditional 
understanding of the term “willfully” as one of intent, it may avail 
itself of the comparative fault defense for the purpose of lessening 
its liability. 
Because it is not legally feasible to apply the concept of 
comparative negligence to an intentional tort, the majority was 
faced with the Herculean task of transforming a statute that 
expressly requires a willful act into a negligence action.  Somehow, 
notwithstanding clear and unambiguous statutory language, well-
settled case law, and logic to the contrary, the majority purports to 
do just that.  Unfortunately, the sad consequence of today’s action 
is the erroneous erosion of Florida’s longstanding dram shop act.  I 
respectfully dissent. 
The victim in this case, then an eighteen-year-old high school 
student, was grievously injured when she was struck by a pickup 
truck driven by a twenty-year-old driver.  It is undisputed that both 
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individuals were intoxicated at the time and had been served 
alcoholic beverages at local bars beforehand. 
The record indicates that around 2 a.m. on Saturday, 
November 29, 2014, the victim, who was visiting Tallahassee for the 
weekend, was walking with relatives and friends from the Cantina 
101 Restaurant and Tequila Bar to a nearby dormitory.  As she 
walked across the street, the driver, who was driving a pickup truck 
at an estimated speed of as much as fifty-five miles-per-hour in a 
thirty miles-per-hour zone, struck her with his truck, resulting in 
“catastrophic and permanent injuries.”  Majority op. at 3. 
The driver immediately fled the scene.  For a few hours prior to 
2 a.m., he had been a patron at another bar—Potbelly’s, which also 
employed him as a security guard.  Having worked at Potbelly’s on 
the afternoon and evening of Friday, November 28, he returned to 
the bar that night.  Then, over the course of about four hours, he 
used his fifty percent employee discount, opened up three bar tabs, 
and bought a total of eighteen Bud Light beers and six bourbons.  
At trial, he admitted that he “probably had a beer in [his] hand the 
entire evening.”  Thus, this case did not involve a typical situation 
where an underage person gained admission to a bar using a 
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credible false identification.  Indeed, Potbelly’s stipulated at trial 
that “[o]n the evening of November 28, 2014, and the morning of 
November 29, 2014, Devon Dwyer consumed alcoholic beverages on 
the premises of Potbelly’s,” that “Potbelly’s knew that Devon Dwyer 
was a minor and not of legal drinking age,” and that “Potbelly’s had 
actual knowledge of Devon Dwyer’s age, and notwithstanding same, 
willfully and unlawfully furnished alcoholic beverages to him on the 
night of the subject accident.” 
Facts like these underscore the decision of the Florida 
Legislature to allow civil tort actions against vendors who “willfully 
and unlawfully” serve alcoholic beverages to underage persons.  The 
issue before this Court is whether a defense of comparative fault is 
applicable in such cases. 
The Underlying Cause of Action Is Not a Negligence Action 
I fundamentally disagree with the majority’s conclusion that 
the underlying cause of action, alleging the willful and unlawful 
furnishing of alcoholic beverages to an underage person (and the 
resulting harm), is a negligence action for purposes of Florida’s 
comparative fault statute. 
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This Court adopted the doctrine of comparative negligence in 
Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So. 2d 431 (Fla. 1973).  There, we explained: 
“[T]he jury should apportion the negligence of the plaintiff and the 
negligence of the defendant; then, in reaching the amount due the 
plaintiff, the jury should give the plaintiff only such an amount 
proportioned with his negligence and the negligence of the 
defendant.”  Id. at 438 (citing Florida Cent. & P.R. Co. v. Foxworth, 
25 So. 338 (Fla. 1899)).  Notably, “[t]his concept require[s] juries to 
apportion fault on a percentage basis thereby allowing for 
meaningful comparison of analogous types of negligent conduct.”  
Faircloth, 342 So. 3d at 240 (Makar, J., dissenting) (emphasis 
added). 
In 1986, the Florida Legislature codified the comparative fault 
statute at section 768.81, Florida Statutes.  The statute, which has 
been amended multiple times over the years, provides clear 
parameters for its application.  Subsection (1)(c) defines a 
“negligence action” as: “without limitation, a civil action for 
damages based upon a theory of negligence, strict liability, products 
liability, professional malpractice whether couched in terms of 
contract or tort, or breach of warranty and like theories,” and 
- 21 - 
 
importantly, provides that “[t]he substance of an action, not 
conclusory terms used by a party, determines whether an action is a 
negligence action.”  (Emphasis added.)  Moreover, subsection (4) 
excludes “any action based upon an intentional tort.”  Judge 
Makar’s dissent succinctly describes the rationale for excluding 
intentional torts: 
To safeguard comparison of negligence-like claims, the 
legislature said that the “substance of an action, not 
conclusory terms used by a party, determines whether an 
action is a negligence action.”  This rule of interpretation 
is important because it prevents intentional tortfeasors 
from trying to characterize their misconduct as a form of 
negligence to shift responsibility to others and thereby 
reduce their liability. 
 
Faircloth, 342 So. 3d at 240 (Makar, J., dissenting) (citation 
omitted).  Although in my view, the case before us is grounded in 
intentional tort, Judge Makar also reasons that the comparative 
fault statute’s limitation to negligence and like theories would also 
exclude “extreme forms of negligence, such as ‘gross negligence’ or 
‘willful negligence.’ ”  Id. 
The characterization of the complaint against Potbelly’s as a 
negligence action is misplaced because “[t]he complaint was . . . 
grounded in specific language most closely understood to be 
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intentionally tortious misconduct rather than a species of 
negligence as defined in the plain language of the comparative 
negligence statute.”  Id. at 241.  The complaint alleged the following: 
“On the evening of November 28, 2014[,] and early morning of 
November 29, 2014, agents or employees of the Defendant Potbelly’s 
willfully and unlawfully furnished alcoholic beverages to Devon 
Dwyer, knowing him to be a minor.”  (Emphasis added.)  The 
complaint does not allege a negligent act.  “[T]he ‘substance’ of the 
claim is intentional misconduct.”  Id. at 241 (quoting § 768.81(1)(c), 
Fla. Stat.). 
 
Judge Makar cogently summarizes in his dissent: 
[U]nequivocal language of Florida’s comparative 
negligence statute applies only to “negligence actions” 
and not to intentional torts such as a vendor “willfully 
and unlawfully” giving alcohol to a minor.  The legislature 
intended that only “negligence actions” be used as 
comparators for determining fault due to the 
impossibility of comparing negligent acts with intentional 
ones.  Because the substance of the claim against 
Potbelly’s is based on intentional tortious misconduct, 
the trial court correctly ruled that Florida’s comparative 
negligence statute—by its own terms—is inapplicable. 
 
Id. at 248 (quoting § 768.81, Fla. Stat.).  Indeed, “[i]t would be a 
‘perverse and irreconcilable anomaly’ to allow” a vendor that 
willfully and unlawfully furnishes or sells alcoholic beverages to an 
- 23 - 
 
underage person “to ‘diminish or defeat’ its responsibility by 
comparing and thereby apportioning its fault contrary to the 
legislature’s will.”  Id. (quoting Slawson v. Fast Food Enters., 671 
So. 2d 255, 258 (Fla. 4th DCA 1996)). 
The egregious facts of this case make it especially unsuited for 
the majority’s holding.  This is not a case where a store clerk failed 
to check a customer’s identification and unwittingly sold alcohol to 
an underage person.  Here, Potbelly’s repeatedly, time and again 
over a period of hours, furnished beer and liquor to a person who 
was actually employed by Potbelly’s and known to be underage.  
That simply cannot be considered negligent misconduct.  It was 
intentional, and Potbelly’s should not be allowed to benefit from the 
comparative fault statute to lessen its liability. 
 
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent. 
Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal 
Certified Great Public Importance & Direct Conflict of 
Decisions 
 
 
First District - Case No. 1D2019-4058 
 
 
(Leon County) 
 
David J. Sales and Daniel R. Hoffman of David J. Sales, P.A., 
Sarasota, Florida; Donald Hinkle of Hinkle Law, Tallahassee, 
Florida; and Mark Avera of Avera & Smith, LLP, Gainesville, Florida, 
- 24 - 
 
 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Raoul G. Cantero and Veronica Gordon of White & Case LLP, 
Miami, Florida; and Angela C. Flowers of Kubicki Draper, Ocala, 
Florida, 
 
 
for Respondent 
 
Joseph W. Jacquot and Kenneth B. Bell of Gunster Yoakley & 
Stewart, P.A., Tallahassee, Florida; and William J. Schifino and 
John A. Schifino of Gunster Yoakley & Stewart, P.A., Tampa, 
Florida, 
 
for Amici Curiae Florida State University Board of Trustees, 
acting for and on behalf of Florida State University, and 
University of Florida Board of Trustees, acting for and on 
behalf of University of Florida 
 
Kansas R. Gooden of Boyd & Jenerette, P.A., Miami, Florida; and 
Elaine D. Walter of Boyd Richards Parker & Colonnelli, P.L., Miami, 
Florida, 
 
 
 
for Amicus Curiae Florida Defense Lawyers Association