Opinion ID: 2403817
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Does Plaintiff Have a Cause of Action Under a Strict Liability Theory?

Text: The plaintiff asserts that selling grain alcohol to a minor is an ultrahazardous activity, warranting application of strict liability. Whether a defendant has engaged in an ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous activity is a question of law. Splendorio, 682 A.2d at 465. Strict liability attaches when a plaintiff's injuries are proximately caused by some ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous activity of the defendant but not when they are caused by an ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous material. Id. at 465-66. To determine whether an activity is ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous, courts in this jurisdiction consider the following factors: (a) existence of high degree of risk of some harm to the person, land or chattels of others; (b) likelihood that the harm that results from it will be great; (c) inability to eliminate the risk by the exercise of reasonable care; (d) extent to which the activity is not a matter of common usage; (e) inappropriateness of the activity to the place where it is carried on; and (f) extent to which its value to the community is outweighed by its dangerous attributes. Id. at 466 (quoting 3 Restatement (Second) Torts § 520 (1977)). To give our analysis some perspective, the drafters explained that: The harm threatened must be major in degree, and sufficiently serious in its possible consequences to justify holding the defendant strictly responsible for subjecting others to an unusual risk. 3 Restatement (Second) Torts § 520, cmt. g at 38. They provided the following examples of the type of harm: Some activities, such as the use of atomic energy, necessarily and inevitably involve major risks of harm to others, no matter how or where they are carried on. Others, such as the storage of explosives, necessarily involve major risks unless they are conducted in a remote place or to a very limited extent. Still others, such as the operation of a ten-ton traction engine on the public highway, which crushes conduits beneath it, involve such a risk only because of the place where they are carried on. Id. With these benchmarks in mind, while we do not mean to trivialize the risks associated with providing minors with alcoholic beverages, flammable or otherwise, such activity does not rise to the level addressed by § 520 of the restatement. Moreover, as the drafters commented, abnormally dangerous activities are those that cannot be made safe by the use of due care. 3 Restatement (Second) Torts § 520, cmt. h (Most ordinary activities can be made entirely safe by the taking of all reasonable precautions; and when safety cannot be attained by the exercise of due care there is reason to regard the danger as an abnormal one.). We are satisfied that, although selling grain alcohol or alcoholic beverages to a minor is a crime and may pose serious risks to the purchaser and others, it is not an ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous activity as those terms are recognized.