Court Opinion

ID: 9884091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:35:27.180612+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:51.801265
License: Public Domain

STRINGER, Justice
(dissenting).
-The Civil Damages Act, commonly referred to as the Dramshop law, was adopted by the legislature in. 1911, and to characterize it charitably, it is not a model of clarity. Its frequent review by this court provides no more compelling proof of its obscurity, frequently raising issues as to whether a putative claimant fits within the generic category of “other person.” See, e.g.,. Hannah v. Jensen, 298 N.W.2d 52 (Minn.1980) (policeman is not “other person”); Empire Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Williams, 265 Minn. 333, 336, 121 N.W.2d 580, 582-83 (1963) (tortfeasors’ insurance company is not “other person”); Randall v. Village of Excelsior, 258 Minn. 81, 83, 103 N.W.2d 131, 133 (1960) (voluntarily intoxicated minor is hot “other person”). That it is ambiguous as to who was intended to be entitled to bring suit under the statute would seem to be beyond dispute — yet the majority finds no ambiguity and applies it in a manner I believe clearly violates legislative intent. Therefore I respectfully dissent.
Efforts to determine what the legislature intended are rewarded by looking to what the statute says, and equally importantly, what it does not say. It says: [
A spouse, child, parent, guardian, employer, or other person injured in person, property, or means of support, or who incurs other pecuniary loss * * * has a right of action * * *.
Minn.Stat. § 340A.801, subd. 1 (1992) (emphasis-added). It does not say “any other person” as the majority holds, and to add the word “any” dramatically expands the scope of those intended by the legislature to have a claim for injury under the statute.
Inclusion of spouse, child, parent, guardian, or employer1 leaves no doubt as to who is to have a cause of action under the act, but who is included in “other person” is not clear. We are assisted by legislative cannons of construction which provide: “General words are construed to be restricted in their meaning by preceding particular words.” Minn. Stat. § 645.08, subd. 3 (1996). This cannon is commonly referred to as the rule of ejusdem generis. In the Civil Damages Act the preceding particular words have a common feature — a legal relationship involving a level of dependence such that as a result of the illegal sale, a legal responsibility of the injured party to the claimant is impaired.
Applying this rule of construction to the category of “other persons,” we are lead to the conclusion that for someone other than a spouse, child, parent, guardian or employer to be entitled to make a claim under the Civil Damages Act, there must be proof that the illegal sale interfered with or prevented one having a legal obligation to the plaintiff from fulfilling that obligation. It can mean nothing else, unless the statute is to be chopped into separate parts, without any sense of the breadth of its intended protection. The element of dependence in the Act was recognized in Beck v. Groe, 245 Minn. 28, 70 N.W.2d 886 (1955), where we considered whether a trustee bringing an action under the Wrongful Death Act, Minn.Stat. § 573.02 (1953), could 'at the same time, bring an action under the Civil Damages Act, Minn. Stat. § 340.95 (1953). We noted that while the statutes were remedial in nature, they provided separate rights and neither had a common law heritage. Beck, 245 Minn. at 33-34, 70 N.W.2d at 891-92. In citing a variety of‘distinctions between the two statutes, we noted that as to the Wrongful Death Act “[t]he element of dependency is not in*859volved in this statute; the element of pecuniary loss is.” Beck, 245 Minn, at 34, 70 N.W.2d at 892. (Emphasis added.) The requirement of dependency aligns our Civil Damages Act with other states where courts have construed similarly worded civil damages statutes to limit “other persons” to those having a legal relationship of dependence with the injury party. See, e.g., Bangle v. Kurkul, 146 Vt. 513, 510 A.2d 1301, 1303 (1986) (applying the rule of ejusdem generis to conclude 'that within the meaning of Vt. Stat. Ann; tit. 7, § 501 (providing a cause of action for a “husband, wife, child, guardian, employer or other person”), the “other person” must have “some special relation to the intoxicated person”).
Therefore, I would conclude that the plaintiff here is not one entitled to bring suit under the statute because she has no relationship of dependency with the party injured by the illegal sale. Certainly she and Michael Lefto had combined some assets and had a hope to legalize their relationship through their marriage on the day of the accident, but when the accident tragically occurred, there was no legal relationship. It was only a hope or expectation.
The majority’s holding otherwise raises a number of concerns. First, by rejecting an ejusdem generis analysis, the majority in effect converts the wording of the statute from “other person” to' every person, because there are no limits to who can recover under the statute so long as damages can be proven. The majority’s analysis would permit recovery, for example, to a retail sales establishment that could prove that the injured party was a good customer and his loss of income due to his injury occurring because of an illegal sale of alcoholic beverages prevented him from making his customary purchases at the retail store; or a homeowner who had contracted for home improvement services from a contractor would have a claim based on an illegal sale of liquor to his contractor if the contractor was prevented from completing the job because of injuries sustained by the contractor as the result of an illegal sale. The examples are limited only by our imagination. But they are real under the majority’s holding. If the legislature had intended the statute to apply to every person — or “any other person” as 'the majority holds — it would have so written the statute. Other states have done so,2 but Minnesota has not, and it is not the purview of this court to take such a step on its own.
Finally, as there is no counterpart in the common law to the Civil damages action- — at common law purveyors of liquor had no duty to those injured by a sale to a' minor or obviously intoxicated person, Herrly v. Muzik, 374 N.W.2d 275, 276-77 (Minn.1985)— rules of statutory construction require a narrow, cautious approach to applying a law that is purely a creature of the legislature. This is particularly so when it is penal in nature. Id. at 278. In the majority’s haste to provide a cause of action, this principal, too, is sacrificed.

. The reference to “employer” would seem to be on a slightly different footing than "spouse, child, parent, [or] guardian” because employment is traditionally "at will” but until the "at will” right to terminate the employment is exercised by either the employer or employee, their relationship is based on a contract — basically, the employee’s agreement to work in exchange for the employer’s agreement to pay wages or salary. An employer could suffer pecuniary loss if a valued employee — perhaps a creative inventor — were incapacitated and unable to work as a result of injury from an illegal sale of alcoholic beverages, and the statute recognizes this loss as compensa-ble.

. See, e.g., Utah Code Ann. .§ 32A-14-101 (1997) (providing "any third person” injured in specified ways has a cause of action); N.Y. Gen. Oblig. § 11-101 (1997) (providing "any person” injured in specified ways has a cause of action); Ala.Code § 6-5-71 (1997) (providing "[ejvery wife, child, parent, or other person" injured in specified ways has a cause of action).