Court Opinion

ID: 9697260
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:10:04.663131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:30.300105
License: Public Domain

*264O’Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). Section 4307 (as amended, Cum. Sup. 1955, § 2172d) imposes liability upon an individual who, by himself or his agent, sells alcoholic liquor to an intoxicated person, whenever that person, in consequence of his intoxication at the time of the sale, thereafter causes injury to another. This liability runs in favor of the person sustaining the injury. The delict, then, upon which liability rests is the sale. London & Lancashire Indemnity Co. v. Duryea, 143 Conn. 53, 59, 119 A.2d 325. Causal connection between the delict and the injury is not an essential to recovery. Thus, § 4307 provides for the exaction of a penalty, since it creates an extraordinary liability against a wrongdoer in favor of a total stranger to the wrongdoing. And, it should be noted, the penalty is a fluctuating sum, fixed, in each instance, at the figure which represents fair and adequate compensation for the injured person.
It must be conceded, of course, that public policy permits the General Assembly to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors and to provide civil as well as criminal penalties for violations of the law. But this power of regulation by government is not unlimited. State v. Heller, 123 Conn. 492, 497, 196 A. 337. To be sure, the wisdom and the expediency of legislation are for the General Assembly to resolve, and the courts have no concern with either. Nevertheless, in passing upon regulations purporting to have been enacted under the police power, the courts should declare them invalid when it appears that they are manifestly oppressive. State v. Nelson, 126 Conn. 412, 422, 11 A.2d 856.
The oppression which marks § 4307 lies in the lack of a reasonable ceiling upon the size of the penalty. The penalty has no confines; it is circumscribed by no boundaries. The statute, exposing the seller, as it *265does, to unlimited liability, although his delict has nothing at all to do with the subsequent injury to another person, passes far beyond the realm of reasonableness. To compel the seller, in the case at bar, to respond to a judgment of $35,000 in favor of two persons, neither of whom had been harmed in any manner by any wrongdoing of his, smacks of the grossest oppression and inevitably leads to the conclusion that the statute which allows such a result is, and ought to be declared, void. No penalty should be held valid if, as here, it is flagrantly oppressive and disproportionate to the delict that has been committed. Walkerton v. New York, C. & Sl. L. R. Co., 215 Ind. 206, 215, 18 N.E.2d 799; Gooch v. Rogers, 193 Ore. 158, 184, 238 P.2d 274.
For the f oregoing reason, which need not be amplified, and for other reasons, which need not be mentioned, I am unable to agree with my colleagues.