Case Name: Michael BARDY, Appellant, v. WALT DISNEY WORLD COMPANY, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1994-09-23
Citations: 643 So. 2d 46
Docket Number: No. 94-171
Parties: Michael BARDY, Appellant, v. WALT DISNEY WORLD COMPANY, Appellee.
Judges: DAUKSCH, J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 643
Pages: 46–50

Head Matter:
Michael BARDY, Appellant, v. WALT DISNEY WORLD COMPANY, Appellee.
No. 94-171.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
Sept. 23, 1994.
Anthony P. Prieto of Anthony P. Prieto, P.A., Tampa, for appellant.
Robert E. Bonner of Eubanks, Hilyard, Rumbley, Meier & Lengauer, P.A., Orlando, for appellee.

Opinion:
GRIFFIN, Judge.
Appellant, Michael Bardy ["Bardy"], seeks review of a summary final judgment entered in favor of appellee Walt Disney World Company ["Disney"] in his action for negligence.
Bardy, a Disney employee, claims he became voluntarily intoxicated while attending an employee party sponsored by Disney and held on Disney's premises. Before the party ended, Bardy went to his car in the parking lot to lie down. A security guard employed by Disney discovered Bardy sleeping in the car. Despite Bardas protestations that he was too intoxicated to drive, Bardy claims the guard ordered him to move the car and leave the premises. The guard also threatened that if Bardy was not gone when he returned, the guard would .have Bardy arrested. Some time later, Bardy attempted to drive the car off the premises, but after driving only about 500 feet, the car struck a light pole and Bardy was injured. He sued Disney to recover damages for his injuries.
Our reason for reversing best finds expression in Professor William L. Prosser's Handbook of The Law of Torts, § 56 at 340-41 (4th Ed.1971):
Because of this reluctance to countenance "nonfeasance" as a basis of liability, the law has persistently refused to recognize the moral obligation of common decency and common humanity, to come to the aid of another human being who is in danger, even though the outcome is to cost him his life. Some of the decisions have been shocking in the extreme. The expert swimmer, with a boat and a rope at hand, who sees another drowning before his eyes, is not required to do anything at all about it, but may sit on the dock, smoke his cigarette, and watch the man drown. A physician is under no duty to answer the call of one who is dying and might be saved, nor is anyone required to play the part of Florence Nightingale and bind up the wounds of a stranger who is bleeding to death, or to prevent a neighbor's child from hammering on a dangerous explosive, or to remove a stone from the highway where it is a menace to traffic, or a train from a place where it blocks a fire engine on its way to save a house, or even to cry a warning to one who is walking into the jaws of a dangerous machine. The remedy in such cases is left to the "higher law" and the "voice of conscience," which, in a wicked world, would seem to be singularly ineffective either to prevent the harm or to compensate the victim.
⅜ 5jC ⅜ ⅜ # ⅜
Thus far the difficulties of setting any standards of unselfish service to fellow men, and of making any workable rule to cover possible situations where fifty people might fail to rescue one, has limited any tendency to depart from the rule to cases where some special relation between the parties has afforded a justification for the creation of a duty, without any question of setting up a rule of universal application.
As Prosser also explains:
If there is no duty to come to the assistance of a person in difficulty or peril, there is at least a duty to avoid any affirmative acts which make his situation worse. When we cross the line into the field of "misfeasance," liability is far easier to find.... There may be no duty to take care of a man who is ill or intoxicated, and unable to look out for himself; but it is another thing entirely to eject him into the danger of a railroad yard; and if he is injured there will be liability.
Id. at 343. See also Pence v. Ketchum, 326 So.2d 831 (La.1976).
Assuming, as we must, for purposes of this appeal, the plaintiffs version of events, Disney is not free from all liability as a matter of law. Bardy was an employee of Disney, an invitee on Disney property for social purposes (at least until the invitation was revoked by the guard), and the alcohol he drank (thirty 16 oz. cups of beer) had been supplied by Disney. More important, it was an employee or agent of Disney who allegedly ejected him from the property, ordering him to move the motor vehicle. The driving of a motor vehicle by an intoxicated person is not only obviously perilous to the driver but to others as well, and is a violation of law. Given all these circumstances in combination, unless the security guard reasonably believed Bardy could legally and safely drive, Disney had a duty to refrain from ordering him to do so. Theoretically, Disney could be held to some percentage of fault, if a jury found that the security guard's conduct caused Bardy's injuries.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
DAUKSCH, J., concurs.
DIAMANTIS, J., dissents, with opinion.