Summary
This document is Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson’s dissenting opinion in a Texas Supreme Court case concerning the interaction between the Texas Dram Shop Act and Chapter 33’s proportionate-responsibility scheme. The dissent would characterize dram-shop liability as a form of vicarious liability, exclude the provider from apportionment of responsibility with the intoxicated patron in a third-party claim, and limit the court’s prior decision in Smith v. Sewell. It would affirm the court of appeals’ judgment rather than remand for a new trial.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code chapter 33 permits the jury to apportion responsibility between a dram shop and the intoxicated person whose conduct directly caused the injury in a third-party Dram Shop Act action.
- Whether Dram Shop Act liability is direct or a form of vicarious or derivative liability for purposes of chapter 33's apportionment scheme.
- Whether the court of appeals' judgment should be affirmed rather than remanding for a new trial.
- Whether the trial court properly refused to submit F.F.P.'s requested sole-proximate-cause instruction.
Holdings
- The dissent would hold that chapter 33 does not permit the provider to be submitted separately in the apportionment question in a third-party Dram Shop Act action because the provider's liability is vicarious or derivative and the intoxicated person's conduct is the conduct to which causation is imputed.
- The dissent would hold that the Dram Shop Act imposes a form of vicarious liability: once a provider serves an obviously intoxicated person who presents a clear danger, harm caused by the person's intoxication is imputed to the provider.
- The dissent agreed that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by refusing F.F.P.'s requested sole-proximate-cause instruction.
Key quotations
“Once alcohol is provided to a person so “obviously intoxicated to the extent that he presented a clear danger to himself and others,” the provider’s role is complete.” (at 638-39)
“Thus, “given that causation is imputed to the provider in an action under the [Dram Shop] Act, section 33.003 neither contemplates or permits the apportionment of responsibility between the intoxicated patron and the provider in an action brought by an injured third party.”” (at 642)
“If a provider sells to a drunk, it must answer in damages for the injury its patron’s intoxication visits upon an innocent person, even if the sale is not itself the proximate cause.” (at 650)
Factual background
F.F.P. sold alcohol to Ruiz when, according to the dissent, Ruiz was already so intoxicated that he presented a clear danger to himself and others. Ruiz then drove approximately 1.5 miles and caused an accident that injured the Duenezes' family members; he drank at most one additional beer after leaving F.F.P. The dissent stated that the evidence could not support a finding that F.F.P.'s sale caused the accident under the majority's causation analysis.
Procedural history
The Duenezes brought claims against F.F.P. under the Texas Dram Shop Act after an intoxicated patron caused an automobile accident. The court of appeals addressed the apportionment of responsibility and other jury-instruction issues. The Supreme Court of Texas remanded for a new trial, but Chief Justice Jefferson dissented and would have affirmed the court of appeals' judgment.