Court Opinion

ID: 9649913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:13:54.544325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:15.894570
License: Public Domain

DEL SOLE, Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that no cause of action can be established for battery in the present case. Also, I agree that persons may be found negligent for furnishing alcohol to a minor under the doctrine enunciated in Congini v. Portersville Valve Company, 504 Pa. 157, 470 A.2d 515 (1983). However, I can not agree that Appellees are negligent in providing alcohol to Eric Herr, because he was not a minor when his excessive drinking took place, on the day before his twenty-first birthday.
*179While I realize that according to popular usage, an individual is not considered to be twenty-one years of age until his or her twenty-first birthday, “It is well established at common law that one is deemed to to attain a given age on the day before his birthday.” Firing v. Kephart, 466 Pa. 560, 353 A.2d 833, 836 n. 5 (1976), citing, Gerson v. Daly, 337 Pa. 346, 11 A.2d 148 (1940); Commonwealth v. Howe, 35 Pa.Super. 554 (1908). The Pennsylvania statutes involved in establishing negligence per se for the service of intoxicating liquors to minors express no criteria for determining when a person attains the age of twenty-one years. It is well established in our case law that, “A change from the common law cannot be presumed; it must appear to have been meant, or it will be held not to have been made.” Central Lithograph Co. v. Eatmor Chocolate Co., 316 Pa. 300, 175 A. 697 (1935). Therefore, the common law rule must apply in determining when a person is twenty-one years old for the purposes of these statutes.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the application of the Common Law Rule. In In Re: Stout, 521 Pa. 571, 559 A.2d 489 (1989) the Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether Madame Justice Stout would be required to retire under Article V, § 16(b) of the Constitution of the Commonwealth. While the court was determining whether there was a difference between appointed or elected judges for the purposes of mandatory retirement, the court stated as follows:
Reading the related provisions in connection with one another we conclude their proper meaning was that a member of the Pennsylvania judiciary reaches his or her seventieth year, according to the rule of the Common Law, that is on the day before his or her birth date, (See Gerson v. Daly, 337 Pa. 346 11 A.2d 148 (1940)) and that when a jurist reaches the age of seventy years his or her term expires. 521 Pa. at 580, 559 A.2d 489.
Thus, the rule announced in Gerson, supra, has been reaffirmed as recently as 1989.
*180In the instant case, the day of the alleged negligence was the day preceding Eric Herr’s birthday. Therefore the common law rule is controlling, and Eric Herr was an adult, and was not “less than twenty-one years of age,” at the time defendants supplied alcohol to him.
I agree with the majority that legislative intent is the polestar of statutory construction, and that we are bound to presume that the General Assembly did not intend a result that is absurd, impossible of execution or unreasonable. However, we must also presume that the drafters of the statutes in question were aware of the common law, and if they intended to derogate from it, they would have so specified.
The majority seeks to support its view that the trial court’s holding was improper by stating that if this court were to follow the Common Law Rule, then a liquor store or tavern which sold alcohol to an individual on the day before a twenty-first birthday, would not be in violation of the statute prohibiting sales to minors. (Majority Opinion at 173) I fail to see how this analysis would be unreasonable in light of the fact that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has determined that judicial officers attain their age the day before the anniversary date of their birth. On a person’s twenty-first birthday that person is beginning their twenty-second year of life. Therefore, it is not unreasonable, as the Majority would suggest, to allow to purchase alcohol on the day before their twenty-first birthday. While the custom may be that licensees will not serve liquor on that day, they have never been convicted of a crime for doing so.
This court recently affirmed this position in Commonwealth v. Iafrate, 385 Pa.Super. 579, 561 A.2d 1244 (1989). Appellant in Iafrate claimed he was entitled to be tried in Juvenile Court, because he committed the crime the day before his eighteenth birthday, and was legally a “child.” The relevant Pennsylvania statute stated that for the purposes of trial in Juvenile Court, a child was a person under eighteen years of age. We held that because Appellant committed the crime the day preceding his eighteenth birth*181day, he was deemed to be an adult, and should be tried as an adult.
The majority’s attempts to distinguish the present case from Iafrate are unavailing. The majority states that there is, “no common and accepted usage regarding when an individual attain[s] the age of eighteen for the specific purposes of the Juvenile Act” (Majority Opinion at 174) This is patently unreasonable. The popular or common understanding of when a person attains a given age does not change because the age specified for competency is eighteen, rather than twenty-one.
In the instant case, and in Iafrate, the relevant ages were expressed in similar terms, “less than 21 years of age,” and “under 18 years of age,” respectively, and neither statute stated the criteria for determining when a person reaches the given age. As we stated in Iafrate, we, as an intermediate appellate court, can not decide to change established precedent. It is only the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the General Assembly which may overturn the established rule for computing age for the purpose of a given statute.
Since it is clear that Eric Herr was an adult at the time he was supplied with alcoholic beverages, I would hold that the defendants can not be liable as social hosts under the rationale of Klein v. Raysinger, supra.
I further reject Appellants’ claim that a cause of action in negligence is set forth by the allegations that appellees urged or challenged Eric Herr to consume the alcohol which ultimately caused his death. The only authority relied upon for this cause of action is Yania v. Bigan, 397 Pa. 316, 155 A.2d 343 (1959), where an adult coal strip-mining operator had jumped into a water-filled trench at a mining site and had died as a result. It was alleged in the wrongful death and survivor action that followed, that the defendant Bigan, by the employment of verbal coercion caused such a mental impact on the decedent that he lost his freedom of choice and under a compulsion, jumped to his death. The Supreme Court held that such alleged conduct would not constitute *182actionable negligence when directed to an adult in possession of all his mental faculties. The Court also stated that if the decedent “had been a child of tender years or a person mentally deficient then it is conceivable that taunting and enticement could constitute actionable negligence if it resulted in harm.”
I am unwilling to extend the language cited from Yania to find a cause of action for the Appellees’ alleged “challenging conduct” in the present case. Moreover, it is clear that Eric Herr was not a child of tender years and was not mentally deficient in that he did not suffer from mental retardation or mental disease. On the contrary, Eric Herr was a twenty-one year old college student. Although he may have been intoxicated at the time the other students challenged him to drink a bottle of whiskey, we have held that even in the case of a visibly intoxicated adult, it is the consumption rather than the furnishing of alcohol that is the proximate cause of any subsequent occurrence. Orner v. Mallick, supra, 515 Pa. at 136, 527 A.2d 521.
Finally, I find no error in the trial court’s decision to enter summary judgment in favor of the Appellees on the claim brought under the RESTATEMENT (Second) OF TORTS § 322. This section states:
If the actor knows or has reason to know that by his conduct, whether tortious or innocent, he has caused such bodily harm to another as to make him helpless and in danger of further harm, the actor is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent further harm.
This section of the Restatement was addressed in Yania, supra, 397 Pa. at 322, 155 A.2d 343. In that decision, the court noted that the defendant had no duty to help Mr. Yania unless the defendant were legally responsible for placing the victim in the perilous position. If, however, he voluntarily placed himself in a position of danger, then there was no one to blame but himself.
Because Eric Herr was an adult at the time, the other students were not legally responsible for placing him in a dangerous situation, which was in this case his state of *183inebriation. Rather, under Orner, our supreme court held that, “the adult guest who drank more than he should answered alone to himself and to all others for whatever injury followed his acceptance of intoxicants.” Orner, supra, 515 Pa. at 136, 527 A.2d 521. Therefore, no liability should attach under § 322 of the Restatement.
Accordingly, because I find no merit to any of Appellants’ claims, I dissent and would affirm the judgment of the trial court.
Joined by ROWLEY, JOHNSON and HUDOCK, JJ.