Dram Shop and Social Host Liability

When a bar, restaurant, liquor store or private host can be held responsible for injuries caused by someone they served alcohol to - the statutes that create the claim in most states and the very different standards they set (visibly intoxicated, under the legal drinking age, or both), the states with no claim at all, social-host rules for minors, what must be proved, the notice requirements, and who can sue.

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What it means

At common law a person who served alcohol was not responsible for what the drinker later did: the drinking, not the serving, was treated as the cause of the harm. Most states have changed that by statute, and the statutes are called dram shop acts after the old measure of spirits. They make a licensed seller - a bar, restaurant, club, liquor store or convenience store - liable to a person injured by an intoxicated customer in defined circumstances, most commonly where the seller served a customer who was visibly or obviously intoxicated at the time, or served a person below the legal drinking age. The claim belongs to the injured third party (the other driver, the pedestrian, the assault victim) and in many states also to the intoxicated person's survivors in a wrongful-death claim; states divide sharply on whether the drinker, or the drinker's estate, may recover for their own injuries, and most bar it.

The standards are the whole case. A "visible intoxication" statute requires proof of what the customer looked like when served - slurred speech, unsteadiness, bloodshot eyes, behavior - and not merely a high blood-alcohol reading later, though experts are often used to reason backward from the reading to the customer's likely appearance. Some statutes require that the seller knew or should have known, some require recklessness, and a few make the seller liable simply for serving a minor or an obviously intoxicated person without any further showing. Several states cap the damages, impose short notice requirements (a written notice to the seller within a period after the injury as a precondition to suit), or provide a "responsible vendor" defense for sellers whose staff completed approved training. A minority of states have no dram shop liability at all, either because the legislature has abolished it or because the courts never departed from the common-law rule, and in those states the injured person's only recourse is against the drinker.

Social host liability - the responsibility of a private person who furnishes alcohol at a party or in a home - is narrower still. Most states impose none for serving adults, on the reasoning that a host is not in the business and cannot monitor consumption as a bar can. Many, however, impose liability on a host who knowingly furnishes alcohol to a minor, or who allows minors to drink on property they control, and a number make that conduct a crime as well; a few extend host liability to service of a visibly intoxicated adult guest. Employers who serve alcohol at company events fall under the social-host rules in most states. Proof in every version of the claim depends on evidence gathered quickly - receipts, surveillance video, witnesses, the server's and bouncer's accounts, the arresting officer's observations - which is why these cases are investigated immediately and why bars retain video for so short a time.

Where this comes from

When people hire a lawyer for this

A person injured by a drunk driver or an intoxicated assailant should tell the lawyer where the person had been drinking, because the drinker's own insurance is often inadequate and the dram shop claim may be the only route to full compensation - but the claim depends on the state, on evidence that disappears within days, and in several states on a written notice to the seller with a short deadline. Bars and restaurants facing a claim should preserve video, receipts and staff statements immediately and notify their liquor-liability insurer. Parents hosting an event where minors may drink should understand that in many states they are liable civilly and criminally regardless of whether they served the alcohol themselves.

Worried about the cost? A lawyer can be hired for one part of a case only (limited-scope representation), may be paid from what a claim recovers (contingency fee), or may be free through a pro bono program or legal aid; a court can also waive its own filing fees.

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Related terms

Other entries in the same area of law, each written from the same primary sources.

• Assumption of Risk and Liability WaiversThe defense that a person who knowingly took on a danger cannot complain of it - and the signed waiver that tries to make that agreement explicit before the gym, the ski slope or the trampoline park.
• Comparative and Contributory NegligenceRules that decide what happens to a claim when the injured person was also partly careless - and they differ sharply from state to state.
• Contingency FeeA fee arrangement in which the lawyer is paid a percentage of what is recovered, and is paid no fee if nothing is recovered.
• Damages in a Personal Injury ClaimThe categories of loss an injured person can be compensated for - the bills and lost earnings, the pain and the lost enjoyment of life - plus the separate and rarer category meant to punish, and the state caps that limit some of them.
• Dog Bite LiabilityWho pays when a dog injures someone - the strict-liability statutes most states have and what they cover, the older "one-bite" rule that survives in the rest, negligence and leash-law claims that exist under either, the defenses of trespass and provocation, landlord and keeper liability, how homeowners' insurance responds, and the dangerous-dog proceedings that run alongside the civil claim.
• Emotional Distress Claims (IIED and NIED)When the law compensates psychological harm on its own, without a physical injury - the intentional-infliction tort and its "outrageous conduct" threshold, the negligent-infliction claim and the limits states put on it (the impact, zone-of-danger and bystander rules), the proof a claim needs, and how these differ from the emotional-distress damages that ride on any ordinary injury claim.
• Independent Medical ExaminationAn examination by a doctor chosen and paid for by the other side - routine in injury, disability and workers' compensation claims, and not treatment.
• Insurance Bad FaithAn insurer's duty to deal fairly with its own policyholder - and the separate claim that arises when it does not.
• Joint and Several LiabilityWhat happens when more than one person is responsible for the same injury - the traditional rule that each is liable for the whole judgment, the modern rules in most states that limit it by share of fault or by type of damages, contribution between defendants, the effect of settling with one of them, and why the rule decides who actually pays when one defendant is uninsured or bankrupt.
• Loss of ConsortiumThe claim of a spouse - and in some states a child or parent - for what an injury to a family member took from the relationship itself: companionship, affection, household services and the marital relationship, what has to be proved, why it is derivative of the injured person's claim, and how it is pleaded, valued and settled.
• NegligenceCarelessness that the law treats as a legal wrong because it fell below the level of care a reasonable person owed to someone else.
• Negligence Per SeThe rule that breaking a safety statute - running a red light, serving alcohol to a minor, violating a building code - can itself establish that the defendant was careless, without the jury deciding what a reasonable person would have done.
• Premises LiabilityThe responsibility of whoever owns or controls property for injuries caused by its condition - the slip on the wet floor, the broken stair, the unlit car park - and the rules that make the visitor's reason for being there matter.
• Product LiabilityA claim against the maker or seller of a product that injured someone because of how it was designed, how it was made, or what it failed to warn about - and the federal rules that can shut some of those claims down.
• Res Ipsa LoquiturThe doctrine that lets an injured person prove negligence from the accident itself when the cause is unknown but the event is one that does not ordinarily happen without carelessness - its elements, the exclusive-control requirement and how it has loosened, what the doctrine does procedurally (an inference, or a presumption shifting the burden), and where it is and is not used.
• Strict LiabilityLiability for harm without any showing of carelessness - the rule for abnormally dangerous activities, for defective products in most states, and, under many state statutes, for the owner of a dog that bites.
• Subrogation and Medical Liens on a SettlementWhy an injured person does not keep the whole settlement - the right of health insurers, Medicare, Medicaid, ERISA plans, workers' compensation carriers and hospitals to be repaid from a recovery for the treatment they paid for, how each kind of lien is created and enforced, the rules that reduce them, and why the liens have to be resolved before the check is cashed.
• Suing the Government for an Injury (Tort Claims Acts)Why an injury caused by a government employee or a public property defect follows different rules - sovereign immunity and the statutes that waive it, the written claim that must be presented to the agency before any lawsuit and the short deadline for it, the exceptions that keep immunity (discretionary functions, most intentional torts, certain activities), damage caps, and the no-jury and no-punitive-damages rules.
• Vicarious Liability (Respondeat Superior)The rule that makes an employer liable for harm its employee causes while doing the job - the reason the trucking company, the hospital or the delivery firm is the defendant, and the reason "independent contractor" is fought over so hard.
• Workers' CompensationThe state no-fault system that pays medical care and part of lost wages for an injury at work without any proof of fault - and, in exchange, takes away the right to sue the employer, though not the right to sue anyone else who caused it.
• Wrongful Death ClaimA claim brought by surviving family members or an estate when someone dies because of another party's wrongful act.

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