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Jarrett v. Woodward Bros.5/25/2000
Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (Hon. Ellen Segal Huvelle, Trial Judge)
(Argued March 18, 1998 Decided May 25, 2000 )
Opinion for the court by Associate Judge Ruiz.
Opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part by Senior Judge Kern at p. ___.
This case presents an issue of first impression: whether an intoxicated underage patron who sustains injury as a result of his intoxication can sue the restaurant-bar that served him liquor for common law negligence or negligence per se in violation of the standard set forth in D.C. Code § 25-121 (1996), which prohibits the sale of alcohol to, and the consumption of alcohol by, underage and intoxicated persons. We reverse the order granting summary judgment for the restaurant-bar because we conclude 1) that our opinion in Rong Yao Zhou v. Jennifer Mall Restaurant, Inc., 534 A.2d 1268 (D.C. 1987), appeal after remand and reversed and remanded on other grounds by, 699 A.2d 348 (D.C. 1997), and the principles we developed there, require us to extend liability in the case of an underage, intoxicated patron injured as a result of the tavern keeper's negligence; and 2) that assumption of risk is inapplicable in this context because an underage, intoxicated person is deemed incapable, as a matter of law, of relieving the tavern keeper of the duty which the statute imposes.
I.
A. The Facts.
Construed in the light most favorable to the Jarretts, who opposed summary judgment, the record before us shows the following basic facts. On September 16, 1993, Adam Jarrett, then a nineteen-year-old George Washington University ("GW") student, went to Winston's, a popular restaurant-bar owned by appellee, located at 3295 M Street, N.W. Earlier that night, at around 7:00 p.m., Adam and his friends had dinner at Friday's, a restaurant located in the vicinity of GW, where they attempted to buy alcohol, but Adam's fake identification was rejected. Before returning home, Adam and his roommate, Eric Kaufman, stopped at a friend's house shortly after 8:00 p.m., where Adam consumed anywhere from four to six cups of beer from a keg. From there, Adam continued to Winston's with a group of friends. It is not clear from the record whether Adam was allowed into Winston's with knowledge that he was an underage patron or whether he used a fake identification card to gain admission.
At around ten o'clock that evening, when he caught up with Adam at Winston's, Kaufman observed that Adam had consumed at least three shots of alcohol and four or five bottles of beer in a period of less than one hour. Craig Fields, also a friend of Adam's, noticed that Adam was intoxicated when he arrived at Winston's and saw him consume two shots and a beer in a ten-to-fifteen minute period. According to Fields, when he arrived at Winston's Adam was "ridiculous drunk," "had slurred speech. His eyes were half shut. He was laughing and wobbling all around." Kaufman testified in his deposition that Adam was visibly drunk at the time he received "shots" from Winston's. Specifically, "his eyes were like swimming. He was kind of like slurring. He was definitely slurring his words."
Adam Jarrett left Winston's, alone, sometime after eleven o'clock in the evening. At approximately 11:47, he was struck by a car while he was walking in the southbound lanes of Rock Creek Parkway just south of the M Street overpass. Adam was rendered unconscious by the impact, was unresponsive at the scene of the accident, and died the following day. The toxicology report reflected that Adam's blood alcohol level at or near the time of the accident was 298 mg/dL for ethanol which is equivalent to the more
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