Court Opinion

ID: 9878920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-27 17:48:56.129016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:47:42.939074
License: Public Domain

Wyriek, J., with whom Winchester and Reif, JJ., join, dissenting: ¶ 1 No doubt, George Carothers committed a terrible crime. During the course of his 14-hour drinking binge, Carothers on five separate occasions made .the decision to get behind the wheel of his pickup truck and drive drunk, a string of ill-fated decisions that culminated in his running a stop sign and plowing into another car, killing one occupant and seriously injuring two others. ¶ 2 But the question presented by this case isn’t whether Carothers should be held responsible for his stupidity and criminality— he has been. The question-is whether a convenience store that sold Carothers a -nine-pack of beers well into his drinking binge can be. held financially liable for the wreck Car-others caused. In concluding that the convenience store owed a duty to those that Caroth-ers hurt, and thus can be sued pursuant to a newly created cause of action, the majority expands the doctrine of dram-shop liability in a way that cannot be squared with that doctrine’s roots and rationales. I respectfully dissent. I. ¶3 Those whose negligence hurts others should be held responsible. When tort law functions well, it furthers this goal by forcing those responsible for injury to others to pay for the damage caused by their negligence. The cause of action we create today, however, is ill-suited to identifying truly culpable parties, and extends liability beyond what the Legislature intended when it prohibited alcohol sales to intoxicated customers, A ¶ 4 The common law traditionally requires that a plaintiff alleging negligence prove: “(1) the existence of a duty on the part of the defendant to protect plaintiff from injury; (2) a violation of that duty; and (3) injury proximately resulting therefrom.”1 The common law has not historically recognized a cause of action against liquor suppliers for injuries resulting from the actions of their intoxicated patrons because the voluntary act of consumption is the proximate cause of intoxication, and the criminal act of driving under the influence is the proximate cause of any subsequent drunk-driving accident,2 To account for this lack of common law liability, many states enacted “dram shop acts,” creating statutory causes of action against suppliers who overserved patrons who subsequently injured others through 'their drunkenness, Oklahoma was no exception; just after statehood, the Legislature both banned liquor and created .a statutory dram-shop cause of action.3 That cause of action existed until 1959, when it was repealed by the Alcoholic Beverage, .Control Act.4  ■ ¶5 Despite the Legislature’s decision to repeal • the statutory cause of- action, this Go'flrt in 1986 created a common law cause of action “by an injured third person against a commercial vendor of liquor for on the premises consumption.”5 Given concerns over the rise of drunk-driving accidents, the Court concluded it was “not unreasonable to expect a commercial vendor who sells alcoholic beverages for on the premises consumption to a person he knows or should know from the circumstances is already intoxicated, to foresee the unreasonable risk of harm to others who may be injured by such person’s impaired ability to operate an automobile.”6 In the Court’s policy-laden judgment, “the application of the old common law rule of a tavern owner’s nonliability in today’s automo-.five society is unrealistic, inconsistent with modern tort theories and is a complete anachronism within today’s society.”7  ¶ 6 This was a significant departure from the common law of negligence. In particular, the Court deviated from the common law rule when it held that “the voluntary consumption of alcoholic beverages” was not, as a matter of law, a supervening cause.8 This was so, it said, because “the consumption, resulting intoxication and subsequent impaired driving ability of an intoxicated patron who is then involved in an accident are foreseeable intervening causes.”9 Importantly, however, the Court otherwise retained negligence law’s-proximate causation element, emphasizing that “a plaintiff must still show the illegal sale of alcohol led to the impairment of theability of the driver which was the proximate cause of the injury -and there was a causal connection between the sale and a foreseeable ensuing injury.”10 Retention of that proximate causation requirement • was crucial because it kept the new dram-shop cause of action tethered to negligence law’s aim of imposing liability on those who actually cause or contribute to the harm to innocent third parties. B. ¶ 7 Today’s decision, however, further departs from the common law of negligence in sevei-al significant respects. First, it is unclear whether today’s decision recognizes one new duty, or three. The majority first describes a duty not to sell alcohol to a “noticeably intoxicated person,” a duty that it says arises from “a statute which prohibits such sales.”11 But the relevant statutes, 37. O.S. 247, .537,12 only prohibit “knowingly” ■•or “knowingly, willfully and wantonly” selling to an intoxicated person, a far narrower duty than the duty not to sell to those who are’ noticeably intoxicated (i.e., those that are capable of being noticed as intoxicated, even if not actually noticed). The majority later muddies the water further, describing a duty “to exercise reasonable care not to sell liquor to a noticeably intoxicated person”13 — applying negligence’s “reasonableness” standard to the seller’s decision to sell to a noticeably intoxicated person. The indefiniteness of the duty we impose not only deprives sellers of clear notice of what the law requires of them, but it also leaves Tower courts without clear guidance as they grapple with new cases filed as a result of today’s decision. ¶ 8 Second, the new cause of action to pursue violations of these duties seemingly fails to account for negligence law’s requirement that the violation of the duty be the proximate cause of the complained-of harm. On one hand, the majority says the innocent third party must be “injured as a result of the vendor violating a statute which prohibits such sales,”14 which sounds like a proximate cause requirement. But when laying out the elements of its new cause of action, the idea that “a plaintiff must still show the illegal sale of alcohol led to the impairment”15 disappears: “Oklahoma recognizes a cause of action when a commercial vendor of alcohol sells alcohol to a noticeably intoxicated person for consumption off the premises of the vendor when a person is injured as a result of the vendor violating a statute which prohibits such sales, the injury is of the type to be prevented by the statute, and individual injured is a member of the class of persons meant to be protected by the statute.”16 The only requirement thus seems to be that the 'Seller sold the alcohol to a “noticeably” intoxicated customer who later injures a member of the public, regardless of whether the sale in any way contributed to the customer’s intoxication and subsequent drunken accident. ¶ 9 Third, the inherent nature-of sales for on-premiées consumption compared to sales for off-premises consumption renders the latter category of cases poor vehicles for identifying truly culpable parties. In the on-premises context, every liability-triggering sale necessarily contributes in part or whole to the customer’s intoxication. And because bartenders are • uniquely positioned to know whether the customer should be cut off— they mix the drinks, serve them, and otherwise interact with the customer as the drinks are consumed — a dram shop’s potential liability is inherently linked .to its culpability. A dram .shop can thus be liable for the injuries caused by the negligence of a customer because the dram shop’s choice to, exacerbate the customer’s intoxicated state contributed to, the customer’s negligent and ultimately injurious .conduct. The dram shop over-served, the customer drank, the drinking resulted in negligence, and the negligence resulted in harm. ¶ 10 None of this is true with sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption. Because liability only attaches where a sale is made to an already intoxicated customer who cannot legally drink the purchased alcohol until some later point in time,17 the sale that triggers. t liability cannot be said ' to have caused the customer’s intoxication — at best it might later contribute to Ins continued intoxication. And in the mine-run of cases, the seller’s culpability will not be apparent because, unlike the bartender, a convenience store clerk’s interaction .with the customer will almost always be' exceptionally brief, leaving- the clerk poorly situated 'to make determinations about the customer’s state of inebriation. The clerk has not observed the customer’s consumption, does not know what alcohol the customer has consumed, and does not know how fast the customer consumed it. And because the law prohibits the customer from drinking the recently purchased alcohol at the store or anywhere else in public,18 or in a vehicle,19 the store has a reasonable expectation that the alcohol it sold will not be consumed until, the customer has made it to a location where the alcohol can be safely and legally consumed. A sale for off-premises consumption thus fails to serve as an accurate marker of a seller’s contribution to the customer’s .intoxication, and it makes for a liability trigger with little connection to the seller’s actual culpability for subsequent harms to third parties. ¶ 11 The sum of all this is a cause of action that can result in arbitrary impositions of liability. If proximate causation is not an element of the cause of action, a drunk customer could walk into a convenience store, buy a single beer, and throw that beer into the trashcan on the way out the door, and if that customer then crashes into someone while leaving the store, the store can be held liable for the harms caused by that accident — this despite the store having not caused the customer’s intoxication (the customer was drunk when he walked in), and despite the sale having absolutely no causal nexus to the subsequent drunk-driving accident. ¶ 12 Conversely, if a sober customer walks into the store, buys a case of beer, chugs them all in the parking lot of the store, and then crashes into someone while leaving the store, the store cannot be held liable for the hams caused by the accident because the sale was made to the customer when he was sober. But in such a ease, the sale actually is the factual cause of the customer’s intoxication and subsequent drunken driving.20 The result is a cause of action that sometimes imposes more liability as culpability decreases, and less liability as culpability increases. This sort of hit-or-miss liability disconnected from actual causation simply does not further tort law’s goal of imposing liability on those who actually cause ham to third parties, and it thus cannot be fairly- described as a mere extension of traditional dram-shop liability. II. ¶ 13 All of this demonstrates the problems that can arise when the Court ventures into the policymaking thicket and departs significantly from common law principles in so doing. By creating a cause of action based on a statutory duty, the Court is substituting its judgment for the Legislature’s in deciding whether a civil remedy is warranted for vio--lations of the statute. But when deciding whether to provide a damages remedy for violation of a statute, “separation-of-powers principles are or should be central to the analysis.”21 And “[w]hen an issue involves a host of considerations that' must be weighed and appraised, it should be committed to those who write the laws rather than those who interpret them.”22 This is so because “[i]n most instances ... the Legislature is in the better position to consider if the public interest would be served by imposing a new substantive legal liability.”23  ¶ 14 Here, the Legislature created the statutory duty, imposed criminal punishments and civil consequences for its violation, and is uniquely situated to determine whether its policy goals would be furthered by creation of a civil cause of action. The business of regulating those who sell alcoholic beverages is a politically delicate one, as evidenced by the spirited campaigns recently ran for and against State Question 792, which ultimately passed and worked a significant re-write of our State’s alcoholic beverage laws.24 In a time when those vested with the policymaking power grapple with important questions about who should be able to sell which alcoholic beverages and where, and what regulations to impose on those sellers, it strikes me as particularly inappropriate for the judiciary to impose a form of regulation that the Legislature and the people have declined to impose. ¶ 15 In the end, today’s decision leaves sellers of intoxicating beverages with less regulatory certainty rather than more, and confronts them with near strict liability for violations of an amorphous duty. And all this just after we let stand a lower court decision holding that a business has a duty not to call the police to report a customer that the business believes is driving under the influence and is a potential danger to the public.25 In that case, Owen v. Walgreen’s Pharmacy, a man who had just undergone outpatient back surgery entered a Walgreens to pick up a prescription. On his way out, the man stopped at the front register to buy a snack. Believing the man was intoxicated due to his stooped-over gait and mannerisms, and fearing he might harm someone on the roads, the cashier called the police and reported him as a possible drank driver26 When stopped by the police, the man was non-compliant, ultimately had to be pepper-sprayed and tased, and was arrested for resisting arrest.27 The man sued Walgreens claiming that the store negligently made a false police report, and the Court of Civil Appeals held that Wal-greens owes a duty to the public “not to make a false report of drank driving.”28 After Walgreens petitioned this Court for cer-tiorari, we declined by a 5-4 vote,29 allowing the decision to stand. ¶ 16 Together with today’s decision, our recent actions leave business owners adrift, caught between competing duties to ascertain who is drunk before selling them alcohol but never to report those they perceive to be driving drank, lest they be wrong in that perception. In a society where we encourage those who “see something” to “say something,” and where we seek to protect the public by making those who hurt others pay for their actions, this liable-if-you-do-liable-if-you-don’t framework will do little to advance public safety and even less to ensure that truly culpable parties are held responsible for them negligent acts. ¶ 17 I respectfully dissent.  . Sloan v. Owen, 1977 OK 23?, ¶7, 579 P.2d 812, 814 (citations omitted).   . See Brigance v. Velvet Dove Rest., Inc., 1986 OK 41, ¶ 8, 725 P.2d 300, 302 ("At common law a tavern owner who furnishes alcoholic beverages to another is not civilly liable for a third person’s injuries that are caused by the acts of an intoxicated patron. Such a rule is principally based upon concepts of causation that, as a matter of •law, it is' not the sale of liquor by the tavern owner, but the voluntary consumption by the intoxicated person, which is the proximate cause of resulting injuries..,, ” (footnote omitted)).   . See Act of March 24, 1908, ch. 69, art. III, 21, 1907-08 O.S.L. 594, 610 (codified at O.S.1910 3629) (establishing Oklahoma's dram-shop cause of action).   . Tit. 37, ch. 1, 1, 1959 O.S.L. 141, 141, repealing 37 O.S.1951 121.   . Brigance, 1986 OK 41, ¶ 14, 725 P.2d at 303.   . Id. ¶ 17, 725 P.2d at 304   . Id. ¶ 15, 725 P.2d at 304.   . Id. ¶¶23, 725 P.2d at 305.   . Id. (emphasis added).   . Id. ¶21, 725 P.2d at 305 (citations omitted).   . Majority Op. 33.   . See id. 25, 28.   . Id. 33 (emphasis added).   . Id. (emphasis added).   . Brigance, 1986 OK 41, ¶ 21, 725 P.2d at 305.   . Majority Op. 33.   . See infra notes 18 and 19 and accompanying text.   . See 37 O.S.2011 537(A)(8) ("No person shall: ... [d]rink intoxicating liquor in public except on the premises of a licensee of the Alcoholic Beverage Laws- -Enforcement Commission who is authorized to sell or serve alcoholic beverages by the individual drink or be intoxicated in a public place.”).   . See 37 O.S.2011 537(A)(7) ("No person shall .., [k]nowingly transport in any vehicle upon a public highway, street or alley any alcoholic beverage except in the original container which shall not have been opened and the seal upon which shall not have been broken and from which the original cap or cork shall not have • been removed....”); 21 O.S.2011 1220(A) (virtually the same).   . And what of the drunk customer who buys á case of beer, drives home, goes to bed and wakes up sober, drinks the case of beer, and then drives away from his home and causes an accident? In this case, the sale made by the convenience store actually contributed to the intoxication that caused the accident, but most would agree that the intervening sobriety of the customer and the passage of time should cut off the convenience store’s liability. The new cause of action, however, contains no element preventing the imposition of liability in such a scenario.   . Ziglar v. Abbasi, — U.S. ——, 137 S.Ct. 1843, 1857, 198 L.Ed.2d 290 (2017).   . Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).   . Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).   .See generally State Question 792 (as proposed by Okla. Sec'y of State, July 7, 2016) (to be codified at Okla. Const, art. XXVIIIA, 1-10) (whereby the people voted to re-write Oklahoma’s constitutional provisions governing alcoholic beverages), available at https://www. sos.ok.gov/documents/questions/792.pdf; Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Control Act, ch. 366, 1-168, 2016 O.S.L. 1372, 1376-1486 (to be codified at 37A O.S. 1-101 to 6-128) (whereby the Legislature has rewritten Oklahoma’s alcoholic beverage laws pursuant to the authority granted by the people’s approval of State Question 792).   . See generally Owen v. Walgreen’s Pharmacy, No. 115,276, slip op. (Okla. Civ. App. Dec. 23, 2016) (unpublished).   . Id. at 2-3.   . Id. at 3.   . Id. at 8.   . Owen, No. 115,276, Order Den. Pet. for Cert. (Okla. May 30, 2017) (Combs, C.J., Winchester, Reif, and Wyrick, JJ„ dissenting).