Opinion ID: 1403970
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: brigance abrogates the common-law causal barrier against third parties' recovery from the tavernkeeper

Text: By the common law of England a tavern owner is not liable for furnishing alcoholic beverages to one who after becoming intoxicated injures either himself or another. Claims do not lie against liquor vendors because  according to the common law's notion of causality  it is the voluntary consumption of alcohol rather than its sale that constitutes the proximate cause of the injuries sought to be redressed. [3] The causal barrier springs from the common law's recognition that human beings are endowed with free will. The cause of intoxication-generated harm is indivisible and the blame neither transferable nor apportionable. One who voluntarily and knowingly overdrinks is viewed as the author of his willed misdeeds and of the ensuing harm. He/she is alone responsible for the consequences of the action. [4] The individual's willed ingestion breaks the chain of causation and insulates the tavernkeeper's sale from becoming the proximate cause of the ingestion-generated damage. The teaching of Brigance removes the causal barrier for a third party injured by the intoxicated purchaser. Brigance makes a third party's claim actionable by rejecting the common law's notion that the buyer's voluntary ingestion poses an insuperable impediment to the causal nexus critical to imposition of liability against the drink's provider. In a later case, McClelland v. Post No. 1201, VFW, [5] we pronounced the pre-existing causal barrier applicable to all claims arising before the effective date of Brigance, no matter what recovery theory may be invoked against the tavernkeeper. Because Brigance appears to signal a sweeping rejection of the common-law causal barrier for all claims generated by the provision of liquor, a revisit of its historical antecedents and underpinnings seems appropriate to limit the outer sweep of that pronouncement. [6]