Court Opinion

ID: 9648982
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:39:55.675213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:06.828699
License: Public Domain

NEBEKER, Associate Judge,
Retired:
I dissent for two reasons. To an extent they are related, for in the end each dictates abstention by this court.
*1278When one examines the basis for the majority holding, it, simply stated, is that the criminal proscription against permitting a drunk person (or one apparently so), from consuming an alcoholic drink is a bridge to impose a civil duty on an A.B.C. license holder. This is in derogation of ordinary rules respecting intervening or proximate cause.
I do not view the cases relied on by the majority {ante at 1274-1275) as requiring us to hold as we do. They are only examples of similar holdings in different contexts, some of which are better reasoned than others, but each representing an individual judicial judgment call. In this case, I would not, being free to choose, follow the course of expanding liability.
The first reason for my unwillingness is that we work a reasonless discrimination between victims of drunk drivers who are injured by one permitted to get drunk, but thereafter not permitted further consumption, and those whose primary malefactors were permitted further consumption of alcohol after becoming intoxicated. In my view, we fail in our obligation to administer justice fairly when we judicially create a cause of action for some innocent third parties by using a statute which operates to exclude others without reason.
My second reason for disagreement is based on the premise that this kind of remedy should be left to the political process. Once we turn the comer on license-holder liability based on D.C.Code § 25-121(b) (1981), we must logically go the next step when the case is presented to us, as it surely will be, The next step is quite simple. Under D.C.Code § 40-716(b) (1986), it is an offense to operate a motor vehicle with a certain level of blood alcohol. When that statute and the aider and abettor statute (D.C. Code § 22-105 (1981)) are taken together, a license holder, or a social host, who aids another to consume sufficient alcohol to become drunk before he drives off in his car, must be held to account under a complaint charging similarly to this one. Section 22-105, supra, makes a principal one who aids and abetts the principal offender “[i]n prosecutions for any criminal offense ... whatever the punishment may be.” Id. These criminal statutes are surely as available as § 25-121(b), supra, to form a duty predicate for civil liability. Indeed, I suspect they are better than § 25-121(b), for they lack the baseless distinction between serving one who is drunk and aiding one in getting drunk and then operating a car.
To be sure, this next step at expanding liability would cure my first objection, viz., that we irrationally discriminate against some victims of drunk drivers. It is both reasons which prompt me to abstain from this holding. The political process is far better suited to decide whether and to what extent suppliers of alcohol, which lead to intoxication and injury to innocent third parties, are subject to suit.
If there is even a colorable argument that this question is for the legislature (and I think it is far stronger), then two judges of this court ought not to decide it alone. Surely the en banc court should apply itself to the task of deciding this issue of abstention or deference to the legislative process.
I dissent.