North Tonawanda Woman Wins $1.5 Million Civil Suit
The Case May Set Precedent On Providing Alcohol To Underage Minors
In a potentially precedent-setting case, a passenger hurt in a one-car crash has won a $1.5 million civil lawsuit against the driver and the person who purchased beer consumed by the driver before the accident. The verdict was rendered Thursday evening in State Supreme Court in Niagara Falls. A six member jury deliberated for three hours after hearing testimony for two weeks. The judgment was reduced from $2 million, because the 16 year old victim was was not wearing a seatbelt.
Her attorneys, J. Michael Hayes of Buffalo, said the case is one of the first involving a new statute that extends the Dram Shop laws (GOL 11-101)governing liability in alcohol-related accidents to social hosts pursuant to General Obligations Law 11-100. This is potentially a very important case. The usual situation is that there is a social host, parents for example, letting kids have beer at a party. In this case, it wasn't the parents but the kids themselves supplying other kids with alcohol.
The purchaser was 17 at the time. He purchased two 15-packs of beer from the Food Mart on Payne Avenue for a group of North Tonawanda teenagers, including the driver who drank the beer before the accident. The car hit a utility pole on River Road in Wheatfield. The only passenger and victim, was left partially paralyzed on her right side.
The driver was not charged in the accident by Niagara County sheriff’s deputies who also did not administer a blood alcohol test, Hayes said. However, the jury concluded that he was either intoxicated or impared due to his consumption of the alcohol. The jury heard testimony from the other teenagers who witnesses the driver drinking a number of beers, a nurse who smelled alcohol on his breath five hours later and a toxicologist who said he would have been intoxicated as a result of drinking the amount of beer specified by the other teens.