Court Opinion

ID: 9729212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:29:22.364433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:56.120609
License: Public Domain

ROSS, Judge
(dissenting).
I am persuaded that the majority construes the caselaw on proximate cause too broadly in its decision to affirm summary judgment, and I respectfully dissent. I do not believe that the recent precedent precludes a jury from determining that proximate cause existed on the presently accepted facts. A factfinder could decide that Riley’s intoxication so reduced his inhibitions, impaired his judgment, and de*313luded Ms perception that he chose imprudently to step from a bridge into a rushing river based on the misperception that he could swim safely to its bank. I therefore would reverse and remand for a trial.
The purposes of the Civil Damage Act are to protect public health, safety, and welfare by carefully regulating liquor distribution, to penalize dram shops for illegal liquor sales, and to provide a remedy for innocent third persons injured “as a result of another’s intoxication.” Englund v. MN CA Partners/MN Joint Ventures, 555 N.W.2d 328, 332 (Minn.App.1996), affd 565 N.W.2d 433 (Minn.1997). Liability under the act depends only on whether an illegal sale of alcohol intoxicated a person and whether that intoxication caused injury. Rambaum v. Swisher, 435 N.W.2d 19, 21 (Minn.1989) (stating elements for establishing dram-shop liability). In other words, the focus is on whether the intoxication impaired the patron’s physical or mental faculties so that his injurious actions can be said to result from the over-service and excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages. The caselaw that defines proximate cause does not invite courts to decide as a matter of law that proximate cause is lacking when, as here, the facts suggest a direct link between the intoxication and the overserved patron’s injurious act. The majority’s proximate-cause holding looks to factors that contributed to the traffic stop (which caused no injury) rather than to the single factor that allegedly contributed to the decision to jump— arguably, intoxication.
These essential facts are accepted for our summary-judgment analysis: A Jerry Dutler Bowl employee unlawfully served Michael Riley alcoholic beverages. The illegal sale intoxicated Riley at nearly twice the legal threshold at the time. A trooper stopped Riley’s vehicle for speeding soon after he left Jerry Dutler Bowl. The trooper told Riley that he would be arrested for driving while intoxicated, and Riley calmly mounted and jumped from the highway-bridge railing into the fast-flowing river to escape arrest, announcing, “I’m out of here.” Someone found his body months later.
The majority rests its decision on three cases. A uniform plot precipitated dismissal as a matter of law in each of these cases: some third person, uninfluenced by the dram shop’s service of alcohol, decided to engage in the act that directly caused injury. But this uniform plot is entirely absent from the case before the court today. This case therefore calls for a different result.
In Kryzer, a bouncer tossed a disruptive, intoxicated patron from a bar, causing the patron injuries. Kryzer v. Champlin Am. Legion No. 600, 494 N.W.2d 35, 36 (Minn.1992). In Kunza, a passenger in a moving van decided to leap from the vehicle to evade abuse by her intoxicated husband, causing her injuries. Kunza v. Pantze, 527 N.W.2d 846, 847-48 (Minn.App.1995), rev’d 531 N.W.2d 839 (Minn.1995). And in Crea, a man attacked the plaintiff after an instigating, intoxicated woman encouraged him to do so. Crea v. Bly, 298 N.W.2d 66, 66 (Minn.1980). A fourth case also contains this plot. In Weber, a police officer decided to chase and apprehend a belligerent, intoxicated minor, causing the officer injuries. Weber v. Au, 512 N.W.2d 348, 349 (Minn.App.1994). In each case the injured person sued under a dram-shop theory of liability. And in each case, the claimant lost, as a matter of law, for lack of proximate cause.
The reasons the Minnesota appellate courts rejected these claims as a matter of law highlight that dram-shop liability must rest on intoxication-induced action that causes injury, not on a third-party’s reaction to the intoxicated person, which in *314turn causes the injury. These cases stand for the unremarkable proposition that the merely responsive injurious action by a third person, as a matter of law, is too attenuated to constitute proximate cause because the action is not a direct product of the patron’s intoxication. In Kryzer, the supreme court emphasized that “[t]he complaint alleges only that it was an act of a club employee in ejecting her which caused the injury.” Kryzer, 494 N.W.2d at 37. In Kunza, the supreme court summarily reinstated summary judgment after this court reversed the district court, relying expressly on Kryzer. Kunza, 531 N.W.2d at 839. In Crea, the court explained that “[wjhile the duties of dram shops to the public are and should be onerous, they do not extend to anticipating and protecting the public from the excesses of third parties beguiled into committing assaults on innocent victims by the importuning of intoxicated ... patrons.” Crea, 298 N.W.2d at 66. And in Weber, this court explained that “Weber has made no allegation that the [minor’s] intoxication had any role in the injury Weber sustained when he apprehended the minor after chasing him on foot.” Weber, 512 N.W.2d at 350.
In sharp contrast to the clear pattern of merely responsive actions by third parties addressed in these dismissed cases, the appellants here rely on a traditional dram-shop theory, focusing directly on action taken by Riley that caused injury. That is, rather than resting their claim on injuries that resulted from a third-party’s reaction to an intoxicated patron’s conduct, the appellants contend that Jerry Dutler Bowl served alcohol unlawfully, causing Riley’s intoxication, and that this intoxication itself caused Riley to engage in the injurious conduct for which the bar is liable. Whether Riley’s reckless decision to plunge into the river resulted from his intoxication or from some other motivation is precisely the type of factual consideration that juries have made in time-honored dram-shop cases. See, e.g., Kvanli v. Village of Watson, 272 Minn. 481, 485, 139 N.W.2d 275, 278 (1965) (holding that “[t]he jury could infer that lack of judgment or perception resulting from intoxication produced by the consumption of the liquor was a proximate cause of the events which brought about the injury”); Murphy v. Hennen, 264 Minn. 457, 461, 119 N.W.2d 489, 492 (1963) (holding that sufficient evidence supported jury verdict holding bar liable when intoxicated patron’s vehicle sideswiped one vehicle and later collided with vehicle plaintiffs daughter was driving); Fette v. Peterson, 404 N.W.2d 862, 864 (Minn.App.1987) (affirming jury verdict finding bar liable when intoxicated person mistook stop sign for green light and struck another vehicle), review denied (Minn. June 26, 1987); Danielson v. Johnson, 366 N.W.2d 309, 313 (Minn.App.1985) (holding that district court did not err by submitting to jury question of liquor stores’ liability in negligence action against other parties after settlement with stores because “there is evidence for the jury’s findings that the liquor stores made illegal sales to minors, that such sales proximately contributed to [the defendant’s] intoxication, and that [his] intoxication was the proximate cause of the [car] collision”), review denied (Minn. June 24,1985).
This ease does not at all fit into the Kryzer line of dismissible cases. It would if, for example, Riley’s intoxication contributed to violent conduct by Riley during the traffic stop and the trooper, in response, had attempted to seize Riley and unintentionally (or even intentionally) pushed him into the river. In that situation it would be accurate to hold that, as a matter of law, Riley’s intoxication is the occasion for but not the cause of the injury.
*315But the majority instead places undue emphasis on the traffic stop and Riley’s attempt to avoid arrest. It emphasizes that “[n]o evidence indicates that Riley’s speed-limit violation or that the trooper’s decision to stop Riley for speeding was directly caused by the intoxication.” The majority therefore concludes that the speeding, stop, and attempted escape “constitute breaks in the chain of causation between Riley’s intoxication and his drowning.” In doing so, the majority misses that Riley’s allegedly clouded mis-perception that he could safely enter into and swim out of the river is the real focus of the proximate-cause analysis. In my opinion, it is this distraction concerning the circumstantial trigger to Riley’s decision to act on his misperception that takes the majority astray and leads it to see distance in the “chain of causation between Riley’s intoxication and his drowning.” But the only causal link between Riley’s intoxication and his drowning is his plunge, which his survivors insist was based on a misperception caused by the alcohol that Jerry Dutler Bowl overserved Riley. The attendant circumstances within these material facts should be of little consequence. What if Riley had stopped on the bridge to fix a flat tire, or to pick up a hitchhiker, or to avoid colliding with a hallucination? The reason for his presence on the bridge does not bear on whether his intoxication caused his injuries. And what if, in any of these circumstances, a passing stranger had dared him to jump into the river, or had paid him to do so? Or what if he had merely imagined that a police officer was attempting to arrest him?
I view these hypothetical scenarios as I view the actual traffic stop and arrest: they are incidental stimulants that might spark an intoxicated person to consider acting on a dangerous alcohol-induced mis-perception. Whether the trooper’s lawful actions would have led a sober Riley to jump should doubtless be of significant concern to the jury. But I do not believe that these incidental triggering circumstances provide a basis to determine proximate cause as a matter of law when it is alleged, and the facts arguably support, that intoxication directly caused the injurious action. I therefore would not determine proximate cause as a matter of law based on the stop, on the trooper’s attempt to arrest Riley, or on Riley’s attempt to avoid arrest.
I add a concern that the majority’s analysis and conclusion seem to suggest that a dram shop is not liable when the intoxicated patron becomes a driver who violates the law, and the violation then leads to the injury. This suggestion inadvertently invites the defense of superseding causation, which precedent has barred in dram-shop cases. The Fette court rejected the defense, explaining that “[i]f ... the driving conduct of [the intoxicated patron] after he left the bar was a superseding cause of the accident, then every bar would have superseding cause as a defense, and the Dram Shop Act would be rendered ineffective.” Fette, 404 N.W.2d at 865 (quotation omitted). If Riley’s illegal driving conduct and illegal flight can prevent liability for the injury that resulted from his alleged drunken misperception, the concern expressed in Fette has not been accounted for here. And the law of dram-shop liability becomes much less clear.
Riley’s leap unquestionably caused the injury, and the appellants maintain that its proximate cause was Riley’s allegedly inebriated misunderstanding that he could launch himself into the river safely. The jury should decide whether, as a matter of fact, intoxication actually contributed to Riley’s decision to take his tragic leap. It could decide this with or without expert testimony because, as the majority points out, the effect of intoxication is generally *316within the common knowledge of laypeople. I would therefore reverse the district court’s entry of summary judgment for Jerry Dutler Bowl.