Social Host Liability

I hope this hasn't been posted before:

Here is a link to the story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050217.wscoc0217/BNStory/National/

edit:
Ottawa ?- The country's highest court has agreed to decide whether an Ottawa-area woman can sue the hosts of a New Year's Eve party after a drunken guest left her paralyzed in a car crash.

Zoë Childs was a passenger in a car that was rammed head-on Jan. 1, 1999, by a vehicle driven by Desmond Desormeaux, a self-described alcoholic who had been convicted twice before of impaired driving.

Ms. Childs, then 18, was rendered a paraplegic and her 17-year-old boyfriend Derek Dupré was killed. Mr. Desormeaux was found guilty of several charges, including impaired driving causing death, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Ms. Childs, of Kemptville, Ont., filed a $6-million civil suit against the party hosts, Julie Zimmerman and Dwight Courrier, saying they were partly liable for the crash because they let Mr. Desormeaux get behind the wheel to drive home.


The suit was rejected by the lower courts, but the Supreme Court of Canada, in a decision released without comment Thursday, agreed to review the matter.

No date has been set for a hearing.

There was conflicting evidence at trial about how drunk Mr. Desormeaux appeared to be when he left the party, whether the hosts offered to let him stay the night, and other key facts.

Also at issue was whether judges or legislators should decide to what extent party hosts should be responsible for the actions of their guests.

The Ontario Superior Court judge who heard the civil suit in 2002 dismissed the damage claim by Ms. Childs. He said it should be up to the province to determine whether so-called social hosts - as opposed to commercial hosts such as bar owners - are liable for damages.

Ontario Court of Appeal turned Ms. Childs down in 2004 on different legal grounds, saying the hosts were not liable in this case but that others could be held responsible in different circumstances.

"This judgment should not be interpreted to mean that social hosts are immune from liability," Justice Karen Weiler wrote then for the appeal court.

She suggested that the key questions were whether the hosts knew an obviously intoxicated guest was going to drive home and whether they did nothing to prevent it.





This worries me. Not only in terms of what this will do to homeowners insurance (both in terms of cost and possible clauses that will exclude payouts when alcohol is involved in any way), but also in terms of an attack on personal responsibility.

I understand that it is tragic that a young woman was paralyzed and I've love to see her get the payout she deserves from the drunk driver. However, going to homeowners for the money because he was driving illegally and had no insurance seems to be trying to correct the wrong in this individual case in a way that can having chilling repercussions across the country.

Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't let people who come to your home drive home drunk if you can, but the way some courts seem to read the standard of care (such as that Archer case back in the mid 90s at the Ontario CA where the guy was drunk and jumped off a roof despite the warnings/demands of the homeowners to not do so that found the homeowners liable) could end up putting an unreasonable onus on the homeowners. I mean, what qualifies as reasonable attempts to stop? Do you have to call the police on people if you think there is the possibility they might drive drunk? Risk the tort of battery/assault to stop them? Etc....

Anyone have any thoughts?