Court Opinion

ID: 9746631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:30:37.431037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:15.534012
License: Public Domain

VAN der VOORT, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the holding of the Majority of the Panel in this case.
This is a tort case involving claims in wrongful death and survival actions. The court below refused to take off a compulsory non-suit which it had granted in favor of appel-lee Holiday House, Inc. The sole issue is whether or not the bartender at the Holiday House served defendant Dean P. Ghion two cocktails when he was visibly intoxicated. The sole evidence that Ghion was visibly intoxicated when he was served the critical drinks is that forty-five minutes after he had been served these two cocktails he was visibly intoxicated at the scene of an accident which he had caused. To hold, as does the Majority, that jurors may infer from the fact that a person who was visibly intoxicated at the scene of an automobile accident to the extent that he was unfit to drive an automobile would have appeared visibly intoxicated to a bartender in the Holiday House three quarters of an hour before the accident, is extending the law of circumstantial evidence much too far. There was no direct evidence at all as to Ghion’s condition or appearance at the time he was served the last two drinks in the Holiday House. The Majority holds that this remote and slender evidence is sufficient to prove by a preponderance of evidence that Ghion was visibly intoxicated at the time he was served alcoholic drinks forty-five minutes earlier.
I would affirm the order of the court below.