Court Opinion

ID: 9589661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:47:19.814458+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:46.718143
License: Public Domain

Justice Orr
concurring.
Although I concur with the factual analysis and conclusions reached by the majority, I feel it is necessary to write separately as to the underlying legal basis for “social host liability” in North Carolina.
*716In the leading case from our jurisdiction, Hart v. Ivey, 332 N.C. 299, 420 S.E.2d 174 (1992), this Court stated:
We have not been able to find a case in this state dealing with the liability of a social host who serves an alcoholic beverage to a person who then injures someone while operating an automobile while under the influence of an intoxicating beverage. We believe, however, that the principles of negligence established by our decisions require that we hold that the plaintiffs in this case have stated a claim.
Id. at 304-05, 420 S.E.2d at 177.
The thrust of the Hart decision centered on the question of duty. The Court further stated:
There remains the question of whether the defendants were under a duty to the plaintiffs not to serve the alcoholic beverage as they did. We said in Council v. Dickerson’s, Inc., 233 N.C. 472, 64 S.E.2d 551 (1951), “[t]he law imposes upon every person who enters upon an active course of conduct the positive duty to exercise ordinary care to protect others from harm, and calls a violation of that duty negligence.” Id. at 474, 64 S.E.2d at 553. The defendants were under a duty to the people who travel on the public highways not to serve alcohol to an intoxicated individual who was known to be driving.
Hart, 332 N.C. at 305, 420 S.E.2d at 178.
In responding to the argument that no cause of action existed for “social host liability,” the Court simply applied established negligence principles and noted, “we are not recognizing a new claim.” Id. at 305-06, 420 S.E.2d at 178. ■
In light of Hart, the arguments in this case focused on the question of duty. As a result, the majority opinion deals with duty but fails to address what I perceive to be the primary area of focus in a “social host liability” case, and that is proximate cause and foreseeability.
Under the common law rule it was not a tort to either sell or give intoxicating liquor to ordinary able-bodied men, and no cause of action existed against one furnishing liquor in favor of those injured by the intoxication of the person so furnished. The reason usually given for this rule being that the drinking of the liquor, not the remote furnishing of it, was the proximate cause of the injury. See 48 C.J.S., Intoxicating Liquors, § 430 (1947); 45 Am. *717Jur. 2d, Intoxicating Liquor, § 553 (1969); 97 A.L.R. 3d 528, § 2 (1980).
Hutchens v. Hankins, 63 N.C. App. 1, 5, 303 S.E.2d 584, 587, disc. rev. denied, 309 N.C. 191, 305 S.E.2d 734 (1983).
In recent years only a handful of courts have continued to follow the old rule of nonliability and refused to allow the injured person to recover from the liquor supplier. Two rationales are commonly advanced to support this rule. First, the proximate cause of both the patron’s intoxication and the subsequent injury to the third party was held to be the consumption of liquor, not its sale or furnishing. Second, even if the sale or furnishing were found to have caused the patron’s intoxication, the subsequent injury to a third party was held to be an unforeseeable result of the furnishing of the intoxicating beverage. The common law rule was succinctly stated in the oft-quoted passage from State for Use of Joyce v. Hatfield, 197 Md. 249, 254, 78 A.2d 754, 756 (Md. App. 1951):
Apart from statute, the common law knows no right of action against a seller of intoxicating liquors, as such, for “causing” intoxication of the person whose negligent or willful wrong has caused injury. Human beings, drunk or sober, are responsible for their own torts. The law (apart from statute) recognizes no relation of proximate cause between the sale of liquor and a tort committed by a buyer who has drunk the liquor.
The rules rests [sic] in part on the further assumption that it is not a tort to sell liquor to an able-bodied man, since the liquor vending business is legitimate and the purchaser is deemed to be responsible. The other common justification for adherence to the old rule is that, in the final analysis, the controlling consideration is one of public policy, and the decision as to liability should be left to the legislature.
Hutchens, 63 N.C. App. at 7-8, 303 S.E.2d at 588-89 (footnotes omitted).
The Court of Appeals in Hutchens concluded:
We agree with the reasoning of the Supreme Court of California in Vesely v. Sager, supra, 5 Cal. 3d [153,] 163-64, 95 Cal. Rptr. [623,] 630-31, 486 P.2d [151,] 158-59 [(1971)], as it held:
*718To the extent that the common law rule of nonliability is based on concepts of proximate cause, we are persuaded by the reasoning of the cases that have abandoned that rule . . . [A]n actor may be liable if his negligence is a substantial factor in causing an injury, and he is not relieved of liability because of the intervening act of a third person if such act was reasonably foreseeable at the time of his negligent conduct...
. . . Moreover, “If the likelihood that a third person may act in a particular manner is the hazard or one of the hazards which makes the actor negligent, such an act whether innocent, negligent, intentionally tortious or criminal does not prevent the actor from being liable for harm caused thereby.” . . .
... Insofar as proximate cause is concerned, we find no basis for a distinction founded solely on the fact that the consumption of an alcoholic beverage is a voluntary act of the consumer and is a link in the chain of causation from the furnishing of the beverage to the injury resulting from intoxication. Under the above principles of proximate cause, it is clear that the furnishing of an alcoholic beverage to an intoxicated person may be a proximate cause of injuries inflicted by that individual upon a third person. If such furnishing is a proximate cause, it is so because the consumption, resulting intoxication, and injury-producing conduct are foreseeable intervening causes, or at least the injury-producing conduct is one of the hazards which makes such furnishing negligent. (Citations omitted.) (Emphasis supplied.)
Hutchens, 63 N.C. App. at 11-12, 303 S.E.2d at 591.
The thrust of the Hutchens opinion was to eliminate under certain circumstances the inflexible barrier to suits against vendors of alcoholic beverages by persons injured by the negligence of consumers of the alcoholic beverages. Thus, after Hutchens, the common law proximate cause/foreseeability bar to such suits had been partially overcome. However, the bar still remained as to social host situations.
In the Court of Appeals decision in Hart v. Ivey, 102 N.C. App. 583, 403 S.E.2d 914 (1991), aff’d, 332 N.C. 299, 420 S.E.2d 174 (1992), the majority extended the rule enunciated in Hutchens to social host *719cases but only in the context of the negligence per se claim based on a public safety statute and not to a common law claim. This Court, however, in the Hart decision did find a common law cause of action but made no comment on the proximate cause/foreseeability issue except to say that the jury could find from the evidence that the negligent conduct was the proximate cause of the injury to plaintiffs.
It should be noted that the California legislature subsequently enacted legislation to abrogate the ruling in Vesely and subsequent decisions that followed or expanded the ruling.
As we previously indicated, the stated purpose of section 25602 is to abrogate the rulings in Coulter v. Superior Court (1978) 21 Cal. 3d 144, 145 Cal. Rptr. 534, 577 P.2d 669, Bernhard, v. Harrah’s Club (1976) 16 Cal. 3d 313, 128 Cal. Rptr. 215, 546 P.2d 719[, cert. denied, 429 U.S. 859, 50 L. Ed. 2d 136 (1976),] and Vesely v. Sager (1971) 5 Cal. 3d 153, 95 Cal. Rptr. 623, 486 P.2d 151, and reaffirm “prior judicial interpretation finding the consumption of alcoholic beverages rather than the serving of alcoholic beverages as the proximate cause of injuries inflicted upon another by an intoxicated person.” (§ 25602, subd. (c).) Coulter, Bernhard and Vesely were cases where the plaintiffs were injured by intoxicated operators of motor vehicles, and were suing the persons or entities who served the alcoholic beverages to the defendant drivers. Obviously, section 25602 now immunizes the person furnishing the alcohol from such liability.
Cantwell v. Peppermill, Inc., 25 Cal. App. 4th 1797, 1802-03, 31 Cal.Rptr. 2d 246, 249 (1994).
The time has now come, in my opinion, for this Court to squarely address “social host liability” on the grounds of proximate cause and foreseeability rather than duty. Based upon the facts of this case, I conclude that the uncontroverted facts show that the defendants/ social hosts took every reasonable step to safely serve alcoholic beverages to the guests. Therefore, on the grounds of foreseeability and proximate cause, I would agree with the result reached that summary judgment was properly granted for defendants Daniels and the News and Observer Publishing Company. To hold otherwise would impose liability simply for the act of serving alcoholic beverages. As Hutchens and Hart both imply, the act of serving alcohol to a person whom you knew or should have known to be intoxicated and plan*720ning to drive would present a set of facts which would arguably survive a motion for summary judgment — at least as to the issues of proximate cause and foreseeability. Such was not the case here.
Justice WEBB joins in this concurring opinion.