Opinion ID: 1403970
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: THE HOLDING OF BRIGANCE v. VELVET DOVE RESTAURANT INC.

Text: All agree that the pertinent case is Brigance v. Velvet Dove Restaurant Inc., 725 P.2d 300 (Okla. 1986). Robertson urges that Brigance should be extended to cover the situation at bar. Todd, however, asserts that Brigance creates a cause of action for innocent third parties, and should not be stretched to include a situation wherein the inebriate sues for his own injuries. In Brigance we recognized for the first time a common law dram shop action; a third party who was injured in an intoxicated driver's auto accident may now state a cause of action against the restaurant that served liquor to the driver. At common law, such an action was not possible. This rule of non-liability was based primarily on concept of proximate cause  that the consumption of the alcohol rather than its sale was the cause of the injury. In changing the common law rule and creating this cause of action, we acknowledged that legal duty and liability are matters of public policy and are therefore subject to the changing attitudes and needs of society. Id. at 303. We pointed out that protection must be afforded to the innocent bystander: With today's car of steel and speed it becomes a lethal weapon in the hands of a drunken imbiber. The frequency of accidents involving drunk drivers are commonplace. Its affliction of bodily injury to an unsuspecting public is also of common knowledge. Id. at 304. (Emphasis Added) The creation of this cause of action, therein limited to third parties, served to protect the innocent by allowing liability to be placed not only on the intoxicated drivers but concurrently on those parties who continued to serve alcohol to their customers already noticeably intoxicated. Id. at 305. Left open by Brigance was the question of whether the consumer-inebriate would have a cause of action against the vendor for on-premises consumption. Again, the question remained unanswered in McClelland v. Post No., 1201, VFW, 770 P.2d 569 (Okla. 1989), wherein we determined that Brigance applied only to those events occurring after October 3, 1986. We are now called upon to address this question.