PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) - A bar’s liability for alcohol-induced car crashes doesn’t end when a drunken patron gets safely home, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled, reversing the dismissal of a lawsuit over a fatal accident that occurred after a man drove home, fell asleep, then decided to get back in his truck again.
Declaring it “a recurring question of statewide importance in dram shop liability cases,” Arizona’s highest court said bars are liable for the actions of their patrons until they sober up. The court rejected defense arguments that the driver’s decision to get back behind the wheel was an unforeseeable intervening cause of the accident.
Cesar Aguilera Villanueva spent the night drinking at Jaguars Club in Phoenix until he got into an altercation with the staff and was ejected from the bar. He drove his truck to his brother’s house at around 2:30 a.m., where he claimed to have spent an hour to “chill out for a little bit and sober up.”
There is no discussion in the opinion about whether he consumed more alcohol at his brother’s house, but a friend drove Villanueva and his girlfriend in his truck to his own house around 4 a.m., where he slept for a while before agreeing to take the friend home. Again, the friend drove the truck, but at around 5 a.m. Villanueva got behind the wheel himself and rammed into a car stopped at a red light, killing both occupants of the vehicle.
Villanueva was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and the families of the victims sued JAI Dining Services, owner of Jaguars Club. JAI argued that it couldn’t be liable for Villanueva’s decision to drive his truck hours after he had safely navigated home, but the trial judge refused to dismiss the case. A jury awarded $2 million in damages, finding JAI 40% at fault.
An appeals court reversed, saying once Villanueva had “safely reached his residence, gone to bed, and fallen asleep, with no known compelling reason to leave,” his independent decision to leave and drive his truck was an intervening and superseding cause that broke the chain of proximate causation.
It was no different, the appeals court said, than if he had become intoxicated at home with alcohol purchased at a grocery store.
The Arizona Supreme Court, in a Nov. 2 decision by Chief Justice Ann Timmer, disagreed.
Proximate or legal cause exists if JAI’s act of overserving Villanueva caused the deaths of the crash victims “in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause,” the court ruled. An intervening cause, meanwhile, is an independent cause that the defendant couldn’t have foreseen.
“The foreseeable risk that an intoxicated patron might drive and cause an accident that injures or kills someone does not vanish solely because the patron initially returns home with the intent to sleep, eat, change clothes, or do myriad other things before deciding to leave home and resume driving,” the court ruled. “Intoxicated people frequently make foolhardy decisions, including refusing to stay put and sober up before getting behind the wheel.”
The decision does not impose “potentially never-ending liability” on bars, the court continued. It cited a 2007 Arizona appeals court decision where a bar drove a drunk patron home and then he snuck back to the club, retrieved his car and caused a fatal accident. That court found the driver’s actions a superseding event as a matter of law.
In this case, the Supreme Court said, nobody drove Villanueva home.
“They knew only that he drove from the club after being escorted out, the court said. “Nothing in the record suggests they knew where he was heading or how long he would be on the road while intoxicated.”
The case is sent back to the Court of Appeals, which will consider other issues JAI brought up but haven't been considered yet.