Opinion ID: 2609904
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Duty based on prior Arizona case law

Text: In 1940, this court sustained a claim for a wife's loss of consortium against defendants who had supplied liquor to her husband, despite knowing he was alcoholic. Pratt v. Daly, 55 Ariz. 535, 104 P.2d 147 (1940). Although it recognized that Arizona had no dram shop statute, this court held that there is a duty not to provide liquor to persons known to have subnormal ability to control their actions. Id. at 546, 104 P.2d at 151. As in the present case, the defendants in Pratt argued there was no Arizona precedent for such a decision and no common law to sustain the action, and therefore the court would be legislating if it allowed the claim to proceed. With great wisdom, Judge Alfred C. Lockwood replied: Every requested application of the principles of the common law to a new set of circumstances is originally without precedent, and some court must be the first one to make the proper application. In answer to the second question, ... [w]e are asked to declare what the common law is and always has been, and a declaration by us that it has always permitted such an action, even though none has ever actually been brought, is no more legislation than would be a declaration that it does not. Id. at 545-46, 104 P.2d at 151. A minor is similar to an adult who has diminished judgment and capacity to control his alcohol consumption. Moreover, unlike Pratt, where the tortious conduct was legal, here it is illegal to furnish alcohol to a minor. In Brannigan, this court sustained an analogous claim, basing its decision on the duty, foreseeability, and causation issues related to furnishing alcohol to a minor. We held in relevant part: A growing number of cases, however, have recognized that one of the very hazards that makes it negligent to furnish liquor to a minor ... is the foreseeable prospect that the [youthful] patron will become drunk and injure himself or others. Accordingly, modern authority has increasingly recognized that one who furnishes liquor to a minor ... breaches a common law duty owed ... to innocent third parties who may be injured. Brannigan, 136 Ariz. at 516, 667 P.2d at 216 (citations omitted). Although Brannigan dealt with a licensee, the common-law concept of the duty of reasonable care logically applies whether the individual furnishing alcohol to an underage person is a licensee or social host. Nor are considerations of proximate causation a reason to conclude there is no liability as a matter of law in all cases. See Ontiveros, 136 Ariz. at 505, 667 P.2d at 205 (finding that both furnishing and drinking alcohol contributed to the cause of the subsequent accident). Furnishing alcohol to underaged consumers creates an obvious and significant risk to the public. The facts of this case and its two companion cases are illustrative. We are hard pressed to find a setting where the risk of an alcohol-related injury is more likely than from underaged drinking at a university fraternity party the first week of the new college year.