PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) - An Arizona appeals court reversed for a second time a $2 million verdict against a bar over a patron who was driven safely home by a friend but woke up hours later and killed two people with his vehicle.
The Arizona Supreme Court sent the previous decision back for review last year after ruling that the fact the driver woke up and decided to drive drunk hours after leaving the bar didn’t necessarily break the chain of causation necessary to find the bar at fault.
In a March 29 decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division One, said the verdict against JAI Dining Services should be dismissed again because the state’s dram-shop law preempted monetary damages against the business. The jury awarded $2 million in compensation to family members of the killed motorists under common-law negligence, assessing 40% of the blame to the bar, but ruled for JAI on claims based on the dram-shop statute.
The appeals court rejected arguments it shouldn’t consider preemption since it wasn’t brought up at trial, saying that would have been futile because the trial court was then bound by a prior appellate decision that it reversed with this case. Outside business groups urged reconsideration, saying the case threatened unlimited liability to bars and restaurants.
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., then was driven by a friend to his own house where he slept for about an hour before getting back behind the wheel and ramming a car stopped at a red light, killing both passengers in it.
The appeals court reversed the verdict for the first time based on a lack of proximate causation, finding that Villanueva’s decision to get out of bed and drive drunk was a superseding cause. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed on that one question, saying whether Villaneuva’s decision snapped the chain of causation was up to the jury. The high court sent the case back to the appeals court to consider other questions, however.
This time, the court agreed to take briefs on the question of preemption, which the defense raised for the first time on appeal. Normally appeals courts are supposed to consider only questions raised at trial, but the court said in this case the defendants had no reason to argue preemption because the First District in 1995 ruled that the dram-shop law unconstitutionally abrogated the right to sue for common-law negligence.
That decision conflicted with a 1986 decision by the Arizona Supreme Court limiting the anti-abrogation doctrine to torts that existed at the time the state constitution was signed. The Arizona Supreme Court established dram-shop liability in 1983 and the state legislature codified it in 1986, the Court of Appeals ruled, so its prior decision was no longer good law. The same issue cut the other way when the legislature immunized social hosts from liability in 1985, the court said.
“Although the judiciary remains free to change the common law, the legislature retains the constitutional power to recraft the parameters or scope of a court-pronounced common law cause of action,” the appeals court said.