Court Opinion

ID: 9572204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:39:35.427445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:54.840673
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur.
While I agree with the underlying theme of the majority opinion—i.e., that under some circumstances a social host, as well as a commercial supplier of alcoholic beverages, may be held legally accountable to those injured by the excessively indulged guest—I have some problems with that portion of the opinion which approves a rigid application of Business and Professions Code section 25602.
The code section provides, in relevant part, that “Every person who . . . furnishes, gives . .. any alcoholic beverage to . .. any obviously intoxicated person is guilty of a misdemeanor.” (Italics added.) The prohibition is against providing alcoholic beverages to one who is already intoxicated. The law frowns upon adding a straw to a camel’s back previously broken.
When the inebriate thereafter causes injury to a third person, it can be argued that the negligence which proximately caused the injury resulted from his original intoxication, not from the additional liquor served after he had already become “obviously intoxicated.” Thus I suggest that in order to hold liable the social provider of liquor, it is not enough to rely upon the provisions of section 25602. The plaintiff should be compelled to prove either (1) that the social host furnished the liquor knowing that it was likely to, and that it did, produce the original intoxication, or (2) that the additional liquor served to one already “obviously intoxicated” increased or prolonged the existing state of intoxication and to that extent was a proximate cause of the injury.
Other than the foregoing limitation on the application of section 25602,1 subscribe to the majority opinion.
Bird, C. J., concurred.