Is the first statute saying that only consuming (not serving) alcohol is the cause of alcohol-involved injuries/deaths, and the second is saying that “true, unless a jury finds otherwise”? Or is it saying that someone serving alcohol cannot be held criminially responsible, but can be held civilly liable (ie, get the pants sued off of them by the victims)? Or is it something totally different?
It’s an attempt, in Olde High Legalese, to create a reasonable and nuanced “Dram Shop Law.”
Circumstances: Harry gets drunk at Fred’s Bar, gets in his car, and runs over Joe.
Obviously, Joe has legal grounds to proceed against Harry.
But does he have legal grounds to proceed against Fred, for letting Harry get drunk and drive – for selling him the necessary alcohol to get drunk?
Answer: In general, no (Sec. 57-10-101). But under certain circumstances, yes (Sec. 57-10-102).
Typical law sections – one sets a general standard; a later provision identifies specific exceptions to that general standard.
Another example: It being January in northern climes, Pete enters Tom’s summer cottage without Tom’s consent. Is he committing trespass? Is he a burglar? The general law makes him a trespasser, because he has entered into a dwelling of another without consent. But there may be sections or clauses in the law that define him as a burglar – he’s removed some of Tom’s property from the cottage, for example – or without criminality altogether – it’s a blizzard outside, and he is simply taking shelter to save his own life for the duration of the blizzard, and secures Tom’s property before leaving, and the law authorizes trespass in such emergency situations.
OK, I’ll take a whack at this. First, this involves civil lawsuits, not criminal law. I’m injured by a drunk, and I try to collect damages from the person who gave him the booze. These two sections, taken together, mean that, if I want to collect damages from the “server,” I’ve got to clear three hurdles.
First, the jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt, that the “serving” of the booze was the proximate cause of my injury. Why is this important? Because that’s the normal standard of proof for a criminal conviction - in a civil suit, the standard is usually by a preponderance of the evidence (that’s how OJ could be acquitted in a criminal trial, but be found liable in a civil wrongful death suit - the standard of proof is lower in a civil case). So, it’s a much tougher hurdle to get across.
Second and Third, I must also show that the server knowingly sold the booze to someone who was underage, or was obviously already looped.
Taken together, these conditions make it damned difficult to sue the server successfully.
Sounds like your state has a strong alcohol lobby, getting the legislature to change the standard of proof for a civil trial. Alcohol lobbies must have a lot of money. Take my state, for example. The SC’s constitution mandates that all drinks sold and imbibed on premises must be in mini-bottles. What purpose does that serve? A mini-bottle has 1.75 ounces of alcohol while a shot glass has 1.2, IIRC. So this provision in the state constitution has a proposed amendment to be voted upon next week, allowing bars to serve what the other 49 states and DC do. What earthly reason to vote against the proposed amendment? Well, the alcohol lobby has promulgated commercials and ads advocating to say No to the proposed amendment. Some of their reasoning is completely misleading. For example, one commercial states that the legislature has never acted on the mini-bottle issue. True, it’s in the constitution. In the meantime, SC has the most drunk-related accidents in the USA. But that’s another topic and one for a different forum.
Well, considering the Jack Daniels world headquarters is only about an hour and half south of the state capitol in Lynchburg, TN, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find a large pro-alcohol lobby in the state legislature…:).
First, the statutes are somewhat inconsistent. But the inconsistency is the result of a single word, “the.” Saying that something is “the” proximate cause of something suggests that it is the only proximate cause. This is a result of the law’s general uncomfortableness with the notion of causation. If we must tie an action to a result, we run into definitional and philosophical problems.
Causation flows along a continuum. On the one hand is “but for” causation. Under this theory, one thing is the cause of another if the second thing would not have happened but for the first. The problem with this definition is what Leo Katz, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/2695.ctl, calls causal promiscuity. For instance, one could say that a murderer’s parents caused the deaths of the murderer’s victims.
Proximate cause is a title that describes a set of legal rules that are meant to deal with this issue and others. One of the issues that proximate cause doctrine attempts to handle is multiple causation. Courts hold that an intevening cause supercedes a previous cause of an injury. Under this doctrine, the SC courts might have ruled that the drunk driver’s negligence is an intervening cause of the injuries caused by the drunk driver. The court might then have concluded that the bar was not liable because it was not a proximate cause of the injuries. Here are some discussions about just such phenomena. http://www.courts.michigan.gov/mcji/dram-shop-actions/dram-shop-actions-ch75.htm
So in an attempt to solve this problem, state legislatures passed laws saying that the selling of alcohol was indeed a proximate cause of accidents. And that explains the first section.
Second, alcohol lobbies were not happy about this legislation. The liked the cases that said bars aren’t liable no matter what they do. So they lobbied against dram shop laws or for compromises, like the second section. As others have pointed out, the section limits the liability of bars to two types of cases: sales to minors, and sales to intoxicated people. It also changes the burden of proof to that of a criminal case Unanimous jury, beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a major concession.