Court Opinion

ID: 9611486
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:57:19.261186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:14.565907
License: Public Domain

*358DENECKE, C. J.,
dissenting.
ORS 471.130(1) provides:
"All licensees and permittees of the commission, before selling or serving alcoholic liquor to any person about whom there is any reasonable doubt of his having reached 21 years of age, shall require such person to produce his identification card issued under ORS 471.140. However, if the person has no identification card, the permittee or licensee shall require such person to make a written statement of age and furnish evidence of his true age and identity.”
The majority holds that one of the legislative purposes of this statute was to protect persons who may be killed by one who has obtained alcoholic liquor from another who, in turn, obtained alcoholic liquor from a seller who failed to require the purchaser to produce an identification card showing the purchaser to be over twenty-one.
The majority attempts to distinguish its holding from our decision in Wiener v. Gamma Phi, ATO Frat., 258 Or 632, 638, 485 P2d 18 (1971). That case involved ORS 471.410(2) providing:
" '* * * [N]o person other than his parent or guardian shall give or otherwise make available any alcoholic liquor to any person under the age of 21 years,’ * * 258 Or at 638.
To distinguish Wiener the majority relies upon the fact that ORS 471.410(2), interpreted in Wiener; does not make it a crime for a parent to give alcoholic liquor to his or her minor child. The majority apparently reasons that this expresses a legislative intent that the statute was not intended to protect third persons because if it were so interpreted third persons injured by minors who obtained liquor from their parents could not recover, while those who were injured by minors who obtained liquor from other than their parents could recover — an incongruous result.
This section has been in the statute since the inception of the Oregon Liquor Control Act, § 33, *359Oregon Laws 1933 (Second Special Session), ch 17, p 38.1 am of the opinion that it was inserted in the belief that it was a parent’s prerogative whether the parent gave his or her children alcoholic liquor. As stated, the majority rests its holding on the reasoning that ORS 471.130(1), requiring proof of age, was intended to protect third persons from death or injury from intoxicated minors.
The only evidence the majority cites as evidence of such legislative intent is that the act states that the act shall be "liberally construed” and it is to "protect the safety, welfare, health, peace and morals of the people of the state.” ORS 471.030(l)(c). That same preamble covers and applies to ORS 471.410(2), the statute construed in Wiener; and apparently was believed by the Wiener majority to be of little consequence. The same preamble appears in the first enactment of the Oregon Liquor Control Act in 1933 and has ever since. Oregon Laws 1933 (Second Special Session), ch 17, §2, p 38.
The statute with which we are concerned in this case states its purpose and it is not what the majority states it to be:
"For the purpose of preventing minors from illegally securing alcoholic liquor by representing falsely their age, all licensees and permittees of the Oregon liquor control commission, before selling or serving alcohlic liquor to any person about whom there is any reasonable doubt of such persons having reached the age of majority, shall require such person to make a written statement of age and furnish other evidence of age and identity.
«sfs * ‡ * *
"Section 3. It shall be unlawful for any person to make a statement of age that is false in whole or in part, or to produce any evidence that would falsely indicate his or her age.” (Emphasis added.) Oregon Laws 1949, ch 592, §§ 1, 3, p 1001.
I am well aware that determining whether the legislature intended a criminal statute to be the basis *360of tort liability is difficult and this court, as well as others, has had problems in this field. Nevertheless, I am compelled to dissent in this case. The express, and, to me, obvious purpose of the statute relied upon by the majority is not what the majority believes it to be. Furthermore, in the last eight years we have held in two cases that the purpose of the parts of the alcoholic control statutes involved was not to protect injured third persons. Wiener v. Gamma Phi, ATO Frat., supra (258 Or 632), and Stachniewicz v. Mar-Cam Corporation, 259 Or 583, 586-587, 488 P2d 436 (1971). Now, without any supporting reasoning except resorting to the general language of the preamble of the Alcoholic Control Act which was applicable to the statutes in two cases which we decided to the contrary, the majority holds the statute was intended by the legislature to protect third persons.
Plaintiff may be able to recover on the theory of common-law negligence. The majority has not determined that issue.
Howell, J., joins in this dissent.