DES MOINES, Iowa (Legal Newsline) - An Iowa strip club that ejected a drunken patron isn’t liable for his death at the hands of a drunk driver half a mile away, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled, rejecting arguments the club had a duty to make sure the customer caught a cab or was arrested by the police.
The April 30 decision by Iowa’s highest court sets down a firm rule against off-premises liability for most businesses and property owners. It drew a lengthy dissent from one justice, who said the majority deviated from accepted principles of tort law by taking the question of legal responsibility away from the jury.
The case stemmed from a night of drinking on August 22, 2015, when Daunton Holly, 22, and his friend Jordan Wills took a cab to Beach Girls, a strip club in a remote area of West Des Moines, arriving around 11:37 p.m. The club isn’t a bar but allows patrons to bring their own beer.
A security guard later testified he saw Holly “repeatedly drop his wallet, knock drinks off a table, and attempt to enter the female dancer’s dressing room.” The guard said he escorted Holly out of the club and offered to call a cab, even though that wasn’t his job. When Holly started walking away, the guard told his friend Wills: “You need to try to get him a cab. It’s not safe for him to be walking around out here with dark clothes on.”
“Holly flipped off Wills as he walked away; Wills returned inside saying, `Well, he’ll regret it tomorrow,’” the Supreme Court wrote in summary.
Surveillance video showed Holly walked away at 1:29 a.m. Less than an hour later, a 911 caller reported a body face down on the pavement half a mile from Beach Girls. An autopsy later showed Holly had a blood-alcohol level of 0.261 and marijuana in his system. Police said the driver whose car hit Holly also was intoxicated. A criminologist determined from the lack of damage to the car Holly was laying in the road when he was run over.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Beach Girls, concluding that although the business owed patrons a duty of reasonable care while on its property, “when Holly voluntarily left the premises, that duty ceased.” An appeals court reversed, saying the trial judge had improperly considered the foreseeability of injury in deciding whether Beach Girls owed a duty to Holly, not one of the elements allowed under Iowa Supreme Court precedent.
The Supreme Court reversed, in an opinion by Justice Thomas D. Waterman. While summary judgment should be rare in negligence lawsuits, the majority ruled, judges can dismiss cases where the undisputed facts show the defendant had no duty to the plaintiff as a matter of law. The fact the trial judge considered foreseeability doesn’t affect the legal conclusion the bar wasn’t responsible for Holly’s death, the court ruled.
Property owners can sometimes be liable for injuries that occur outside their doors, the court noted, such as a bowling alley that was liable for a drunken patron assaulting a customer in the parking lot. But generally the duty of care ends when a patron leaves the property, the court concluded. An Iowa case involving a violent fracas that spilled outside of a bar is distinguishable because the bartender saw one of the assailants attack one of the victims inside before throwing him out, the court ruled.
The Iowa Supreme Court also upheld liability back in 1879 for a saloon keeper who ejected a drunken patron into the freezing night, but the current court said that case involved “outrageous conduct” and doesn’t imply a “general duty of care.”
‘Liability generally follows control,” the court concluded.
“Holly departed that August night on foot and walked over a half mile before he laid down in the travel lane of Raccoon River Drive,” the court ruled. “We hold that Beach Girls’ relationship with Holly, and its duty of care for his safety, ended after he refused its offer of a cab ride and chose to walk away from its parking lot.”
To rule otherwise, the court said, would impose limitless liability on bars whether they forcibly detain drunk customers, risking claims of false arrest, or remove them from the premises and risk being sued over what happens next.
In a lengthy dissent, Justice Brent Appel said the majority failed to properly analyze what he called “the real issue in this case,” which is not whether there was a duty but whether that duty was breached. Tort law presumes a duty of care toward customers except for very narrow exceptions, the judge wrote, leaving the question of whether the business acted unreasonably to the jury. If money is to be paid, businesses should have insurance to cover the cost.
“In this case, it was undisputed that the employees of the strip club engaged in affirmative conduct in ejecting the patron from the bar,” he wrote. “And, as admitted by the employee, the action created a risk of physical harm to the patron.”