Court Opinion

ID: 9726941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:13:43.566269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:32.050784
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE WELCH, specially concurring: In analyzing the plaintiff’s cause of action under the Marion liquor control ordinance, the majority observes that the minor was not employed in violation of that ordinance, which prohibits minors from “drawing, pouring, mixing or serving alcohol.” I do not agree, because I believe that the term “serving” is broad enough to proscribe the conduct of the plaintiff in bringing beer to the motel room. See Hensen v. City of Chicago (1953), 415 Ill. 564, 570, 114 N.E.2d 778, 782; Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2075, “serve,” definition 5b (1961). The majority further concludes that, even if the plaintiff were illegally employed, that alone would not indicate that the defendants were negligent, because the sole purpose of the ordinance was to prevent minors from consuming alcoholic beverages. However, it should be recalled that other laws accomplish that result more directly. The liquor business has been described as one “fraught with danger to the community” (Tavern Owners Association of Lake County, Illinois, Inc. v. County of Lake (1977), 52 Ill. App. 3d 542, 547, 367 N.E.2d 748, 751), and that danger is even greater when a minor, who lacks the judgment and experience of an adult, is employed in that business to dispense alcohol. The potentially serious consequences to the minor, as well as to others, of serving alcohol to one who is intoxicated appear to me to have been the kind of injury the ordinance was designed to prevent. Thus, I think that the violation of the ordinance should be considered as evidence of negligence in this case. Barthel v. Illinois Central Gulf R.R. Co. (1978), 74 Ill. 2d 213, 384 N.E.2d 323. Yet, I must agree with the result reached by the majority because the plaintiff cannot show that his injury was occasioned by his employer’s negligence in allowing him to bring beer to the motel room. Illustrative of this principle is Yerk v. Rockford Coca Cola Bottling Co. (1973), 12 Ill. App. 3d 299, 298 N.E.2d 319. There, a minor who was employed in connection with a bottle sorting machine in violation of section 7 of the Child Labor Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1981, ch. 48, par. 31.7) was injured in a fight with a fellow employee. The minor rejected his workers’compensation remedies and brought a common law action, alleging that his employer violated the Child Labor Act. The court noted that while it is true that, but for the minor’s employment at the sorting machine, he would not have been assaulted, this did not give rise to liability under the Act. It was stated that “[a]n analysis of the cases in which recovery has been permitted under the child labor laws indicates that in each case the injury was connected with a danger inherent in the environment in which the minor was illegally placed.” (12 Ill. App. 3d 299, 301, 298 N.E.2d 319, 321.) Such a causal connection was not established in that case, and summary judgment for the defendant was affirmed. Similarly, the minor in this case brought his action under an enactment which, like the Child Labor Act, was designed “to protect children from engaging in employments where their immaturity, inexperience, and heedlessness might cause them to be injured.” (Beauchamp v. Sturges & Burn Manufacturing Co. (1911), 250 Ill. 303, 311, 95 N.E. 204, 207, aff'd (1914), 231 U.S. 320, 58 L. Ed. 245, 34 S. Ct. 60.) And, it is certainly true that the assault upon the minor was more within the range of injuries to be prevented by the Marion liquor control ordinance than was the assault in Yerk one of the dangers to be prevented by section 7 of the Child Labor Act. Nonetheless, the connection established by the minor in this case is simply that he was assaulted while carrying liquor to the room. He has failed to demonstrate a causal relationship between his employment outside the scope of the Marion ordinance and the attack, which, as the majority notes, could well have occurred had he appeared at the room for any other purpose in his employment. The fact that the article he carried happened to have been beer is not a cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. Subject to these observations, I concur in the majority’s opinion.