Court Opinion

ID: 9582562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:28:41.584556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:58.120199
License: Public Domain

Steffen, J.,
with whom Mowbray, C. J., agrees,
dissenting:
For “many moons,” common law courts have been improving the lot of humankind by recognizing and implementing, through legitimate common-law processes, accepted social standards and mores. Progressively greater emphasis has been placed on the value, quality, and security of a human life rather than the financial rewards of human enterprise. The protective umbrella of tort law has especially benefitted from the judiciary’s incisive expansion of the common law.
In the celebrated case of MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., 111 N.E. 1050 (N.Y. 1916), the venerable Cardozo wrote: “Precedents drawn from the days of travel by stagecoach do not fit the conditions of travel to-day. The principle that the danger must be imminent does not change, but the things subject to the principle do change. They are whatever the needs of life in a developing civilization require them to be.” Id. at 1053. The product at issue in MacPherson was an automobile that was capable of traveling at the speed of 50 miles per hour. The dissent in MacPherson would have adhered to the prevailing, traditional view that liability could not extend beyond the parties who were in contractual privity. Thus, the manufacturer of the automobile could be liable only to the retailer who purchased it from the manufacturer. Cardozo, however, speaking for the court, observed:
If the nature of a thing is such that it is reasonably certain to place life and limb in peril when negligently made, it is then a thing of danger. If to the element of danger there is added knowledge that the thing will be used by persons other than the purchaser, and used without new tests, then, irrespective of contract, the manufacturer of this thing of danger is under a duty to make it carefully.

Id.

Today, of course, highway vehicles are capable of speeds well over twice that of concern to the MacPherson court. Highway deaths and injuries have reached a magnitude that is both a national tragedy and disgrace. The role of alcohol in the death and maiming of countless numbers of men, women and children each year is well and indisputably attested. The shattered concourses of victims of alcohol-related accidents have combined with a restive and angry society to create a responsive, solid majority of courts that have recognized a cause of action against negligent vendors of alcohol.
*1098It is instructive to note the development of the common law in its response to the growing menace of inebriated drivers on the highways. Justice Erickson, writing for the Supreme Court of Colorado in Largo Corp. v. Crespin, 727 P.2d 1098 (Colo. 1986), recounted:
The modern era of dramshop liability began in 1959, when two courts—the Seventh Circuit in Waynick v. Chicago’s Last Department Store, 269 F.2d 322 (7th Cir. 1959), cert. denied, 362 U.S. 903, 80 S.Ct. 611, 4 L.Ed.2d 554 (1960), and the New Jersey Supreme Court in Rappoport v. Nichols, 31 N.J. 188, 156 A.2d 1 (1959)—held that a third party injured by an intoxicated person may bring a negligence action against the commercial vendor who sold liquor to the intoxicated person. Both decisions rejected the defendants’ contention that the sale or service of an alcoholic beverage could not, as a matter of law, be the proximate cause of injury to a third party. The Rappoport court said: “Where a tavern keeper sells alcoholic beverages to a person who is visibly intoxicated or to a person he knows or should know from the circumstances to be a minor, he ought to recognize and foresee the unreasonable risk of harm to others through action of the intoxicated person or the minor.” 156 A.2d at 8. The court concluded that the danger was “particularly evident in current times when traveling by car to and from the tavern is so commonplace and accidents resulting from drinking are so frequent.” Id.
The Largo court recognized the clear foreseeability of injury resulting from drivers whose abilities and judgment are impaired by intoxicants. Moreover, the court described as “outdated and ill-reasoned,” the old common law rule that “the person who consumed alcohol became a superseding cause of the injury and broke the causal relation between the vendor’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injuries.” Id. at 1103.
The majority in the instant case perpetuate the “outdated and ill-reasoned” decisions of the past on the gossamery rationale that any change in the law should emanate from the legislature. I suggest that the majority’s deference to the legislative branch of government is neither justified nor responsive to the public policy of this state. The majority’s intransigence is unjustified because, in the finest tradition of the common law, “the overwhelming majority of courts have abandoned the old common-law rule and allowed negligence actions against commercial vendors of alcoholic beverages.” Largo, 727 P.2d at 1101.
Today’s majority opinion is also unresponsive to Nevada’s public policy as reflected by ever increasing criminal sanctions *1099against persons who drive under the influence of alcohol. Unfortunately, criminal sanctions against offending drivers accomplished little by way of discouraging purveyors of intoxicants from serving persons already numbed by the effects of alcohol.
Moreover, today’s “head-in-the-sand” ruling fails to recognize the facts of life. I intend no disrespect for our legislators, but the realities of political life in a state heavily financed by establishments that benefit economically from the sales and inducements of alcoholic beverages leave small reason to believe that dram-shop legislation will soon materialize. In a state that relies so extensively on “odds,” I suggest that the prospects for dramshop legislation are about the same as they were for voluntary legislative redistricting when judicial rescue was necessitated in the form of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962).
Although placing economic considerations above ongoing human sacrifice to alcohol is sufficiently distressing of itself, I suggest that the majority’s tacit fears of economic ruin from embracing the majority rule are unfounded. Again, the Largo decision is instructive on the point:
[A]s to the consequences of imposing such a burden upon tavern owners, we reject Largo’s claim that civil liability for the negligent sale of alcohol would impose insurmountable proof problems on tavern owners. Whatever problems of proof exist, the plaintiff will be confronted with the same obstacles in reconstructing the facts, and the plaintiff, not the defendant, will bear the burden of proving a breach of duty.
Largo, 727 P.2d at 1103.
The enormous perils to which our citizens are constantly exposed on the highways of our state and nation from intoxicated drivers demand resourceful, effective, and humane solutions. The judicial branch of government should be at the vanguard in protecting society from this pervasive menace. In recognizing the inherent power of the judiciary to “decide the common law questions of duty, breach of duty and proximate cause,” the Largo court cogently declared, “[i]t is the province of the judiciary to develop, interpret, and apply the common law. We do not go beyond the proper sphere of the judiciary, nor do we encroach upon legislative prerogatives, by reevaluating common-law rules in light of present circumstances.” Id. at 1104.
The majority framed the issue of the instant case in terms of “whether this court should change existing Nevada case law to recognize a claim for relief against one famishing liquor to a minor in favor of those injured as a consequence of the minor’s intoxication.” This court could have seized the moment to pro*1100vide a significant step forward in the war against the contagion of havoc thrust upon our highways by human time bombs activated by alcohol.
For the reasons abbreviated above, I respectfully register my disappointment and dissenting vote over the majority’s refusal to embrace the eminently wise position adopted by the overwhelming majority of courts in our sister states.