Opinion ID: 517590
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: effect of the violation

Text: 9 We start this journey with what seems to us a logical first step: we consider what the legislature wrought and what, insofar as we can tell, it intended to accomplish. In section 69, Massachusetts established a statutory duty. Among other things, it said in the third subsection (if we may paraphrase): you, barkeep, are obliged not to serve a person known to you to have been drunk within the previous six months. Once enacted, that duty inured to the benefit of both imbiber and general public. But Massachusetts law does not reflexively equate breach of duty predicated upon a statutory violation with strict liability. See Adamian, 233 N.E.2d at 19 (violation only some evidence of negligence). As with any common law tort, a plaintiff must still carry his burden of proving negligence and causation (both actual and proximate). Michnik-Zilberman v. Gordon's Liquor, Inc., 390 Mass. 6, 453 N.E.2d 430, 433-34 (1983); Cimino, 431 N.E.2d at 926; Wiska, 390 N.E.2d at 1136. 10 In this case, we focus first on causation, inasmuch as the district court found that element determinative. See D.Ct.Op. at 176-77. Actual causation was not at issue. It brooks no argument that the alcohol served to Donnelly so impaired him that he drove recklessly, killing Swift and maiming Walker. Yet actual causation is not enough; there must be proximate cause as well. And we know the inquiry into proximate cause to be independent of that into actual cause. See Karelitz v. Damson Oil Corp., 820 F.2d 529, 531 (1st Cir.1987) (the law of torts does not allow B to recover from A simply by showing the presence of 'but-for' causality). The touchstone is foreseeability: negligence equals liability if, and to the extent that, a foreseeable risk of harm materializes. Not what actually happened, but what the reasonably prudent person would then have foreseen as likely to happen, is the key to the question of whether challenged conduct can be branded as unreasonable. 3 F. Harper, F. James, Jr. & O. Gray, Law of Torts Sec. 16.9 at 468-69 (2d ed.1986) (emphasis in original). See also Kelley v. Schlumberger Technology Corp., 849 F.2d 41, 44 (1st Cir.1988) (similar). 11 In making this evaluative judgment, courts must apply the foreseeability standard in a way that is true both to the common law and to the ends the particular statute was designed to achieve. Serving a drink to an individual who has been drunk at some time within the previous six months, by itself, creates a bare possibility, but not necessarily a likelihood, of danger. One reason this is so is that the variables incident to a previous bout of intoxication within a period spanning half a year are so many and so diverse that no reasonable set of expectations can attend the mere fact of service to someone with such a pedigree. 3 Thus, one sound way to give effect to the legislative determination that six months is a significant milepost is to consider service within that period as some evidence of negligence, leaving it to the proof in a particular case to show whether or not findings of (a) negligence, and (b) foreseeability--the required causal connection between the act and the harm--should be reached. Lighting a match in the presence of a known gas leak is reckless; lighting a match in a room where six months earlier such a leak was discovered may not be. 12 Consonant with the method of section 69, therefore, we rule that the third subsection can serve as the premise for a duty, and that service in violation of the subsection may be the actual cause of injury, without more. Yet we hold that, though a violation of section 69's third subsection can serve as some evidence of negligence, and can combine with other evidence to sustain a tort action, it is insufficient by itself to carry the day as a matter of law. 13 The district court, we believe, misperceived Massachusetts law on this point. The court ruled that the mere serving of liquor to Mr. Donnelly at a time when he did not appear intoxicated, although such service was in violation of [Mass.Gen.L. ch. 138, Sec. 69, was] not as a matter of law the proximate cause of the tragedy that eventually ensued. D.Ct.Op. at 176 (emphasis supplied). The determination--as witness the phrase which we have underscored--appears to have been made as one of law, not of fact. As the district judge said: 14 ... [I]t is the specific language of Wiska [v. St. Stanislaus Social Club, Inc.] that leads me to believe as matter of law that proximate causation between the serving of liquor to someone who did not appear intoxicated [Donnelly] and the incident which occurred is lacking. And taking the two cases together, Wiska and Cimino [v. Milford Keg, Inc.], the Court concludes that the law of Massachusetts at present does not impose liability for what has occurred here. 15 Id. at 177. This, we think, was error. 16 Application of the legal cause standard to the circumstances of a particular case is a function ordinarily performed by, and peculiarly within the competence of, the factfinder. The SJC has consistently held questions of causation to be for the factfinder. Irwin v. Town of Ware, 467 N.E.2d at 1305; Mullins v. Pine Manor College, 389 Mass. 47, 449 N.E.2d 331, 338 (1983); Zezuski v. Jenny Mfg. Co., 363 Mass. 324, 293 N.E.2d 875, 878-79 (1973). And, this court has manifested a similar persuasion; for example, we recently observed that [n]ot only ordinary fact questions, but also 'evaluative applications of legal standards (such as the legal concept of foreseeability) to the facts' are properly [questions for the factfinder]. Springer v. Seamen, 821 F.2d 871, 876 (1st Cir.1987) (quoting W. Prosser & W. Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on Torts 320 (5th ed. 1984)) (footnote omitted); see also Marshall v. Perez Arzuaga, 828 F.2d 845, 850-51 & n. 8 (1st Cir.1987) (discussing foreseeability as a question within the province of the factfinder), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 1027, 98 L.Ed.2d 991 (1988). 17 What we have said as to proximate cause is equally true as to negligence. The statutory violation was some evidence of negligence, but not necessarily dispositive of the question. Notwithstanding transgression of the statutory duty, it remained for the trial court, qua factfinder, to determine whether, on the record as a whole, defendant's agents employed that degree of care, vigilance, and forethought which, in the discharge of the duty then resting on [them], the person of ordinarily caution and prudence ought to exercise under the [same or similar] circumstances. Beaver v. Costin, 352 Mass. 624, 227 N.E.2d 344, 346 (1967) (quoting Altman v. Aronson, 231 Mass. 588, 121 N.E. 505, 506 (1919)). 18 Nor can we fill the resultant void on appeal. In a bench trial, it is apodictic that, if there are various permissible views of the proof ... it [is] the district judge's prerogative, indeed, his duty, to choose among them. Keyes v. Secretary of the Navy, 853 F.2d 1016, 1027 (1st Cir.1988). Assaying the quality of defendant's acts and omissions--whether there was negligence and if so, whether that negligence was the legal cause of the accident which ensued--adjures just such a judgment call. We cannot tell with any real assurance how the district court might have decided these questions if it had recognized the true state of the law. At this point, we could but speculate--and it would disserve our proper role to do so. The most appropriate course, in our view, is to remand for a new trial, so that the needed factfinding can be accomplished by the nisi prius court, in the conventional manner, with Mass.Gen.L. ch. 138, Sec. 69 placed in its due perspective.