Davis v. Shiappacossee, 32277
| Decision Date | 17 July 1963 |
| Docket Number | No. 32277,32277 |
| Citation | 155 So.2d 365 |
| Parties | Reginald Owen DAVIS, Petitioner, v. J. B. SHIAPPACOSSEE, Respondent. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Gibbons, Gibbons, Tucker & Cofer, Wm. Earle Tucker, Sam M. Gibbons and David C. Holloman, Tampa, for petitioner.
Frank Ragano, Tampa, for respondent.
The judge of the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit dismissed the petitioner's complaint and when the District Court of Appeal, Second District, affirmed the judgment, petitioner applied here for certiorari claiming the decision of the appellate court was in disharmony with the one of this court in Tamiami Gun Shop v. Klein reported in Fla., 116 So.2d at page 421. We thought the position had worth so we set the matter for hearing on jurisdiction and merits.
The petitioner had sued the respondent for damages resulting from the death of his son, Darrell Reginald Davis, a lad 16 years of age, which occurred in circumstances we will now detail.
At all times relevant to this episode the respondent operated the Estuary Bar where intoxicating liquors and beer were dispensed under supervision of the Beverage Commission of Florida. In the conduct of the business, orders were received from persons in cars parked on the premises and were filled by delivery to the customers while occupying their cars. One of respondent's employees was Robert Farmer who among other tasks about the place, took and filled the orders of these curbstone customers.
At 8:30 one night in January 1960 the minor son accompanied by two friends, 17 and 18 years old, respectively, went to the Estuary Bar to purchase beverages. They were met there by Farmer who, without inquiring about their ages, delivered to them for a price one case of beer containing 24 cans and one-half pint of whiskey. The boys proceeded to a drive-in theatre and then drove to a park near a school. During these visits they drank the whiskey and 14 cans of the beer. As a consequence the petitioner's son and his younger companion became nauseated. When they recovered to some extent they went to the home of the older companion and left him there. Afterward as petitioner's son, still under the influence of liquor, according to the allegations of the complaint, was driving along the road at the rate of 55 miles an hour, accompanied by the remaining companion, he lost control of the car, struck an oak tree and turned over. Within six hours of the purchase of the alcohol petitioner's son was dead from the injuries received when the car was wrecked.
The petitioner contended in the District Court of Appeal that the respondent through his agent, Farmer, violated Sec. 562.11, Florida Statutes, F.S.A., making it unlawful to sell alcoholic beverages to a minor under penalty of imprisonment in jail or fine, and that so to violate the law should be held negligence per se. In response to the assertion the respondent insisted that the proximate cause of the death was not the sale of the beverages and that the fatal crash was not a reasonably foreseeable event.
The District Court of Appeal citing our opinion in Cone v. Inter County Tel. & Tel. Co., Fla., 40 So.2d 148, concluded that the automobile mishap and the death were not reasonably expected or probable results of the illegal sale. The court, obviously undertaking to follow faithfully the rule established in that case that '[i]t is only when an injury to a person [himself faultless] has resulted directly and in ordinary natural sequence from a negligent act' without an intervening independent cause, or 'is such as ordinarily and naturally should have been regarded as a probable' as distinguished from a 'possible' result that the injured person can recover, ruled in defendant-respondent's favor.
The court classified the contingencies in the present case as too remote hence only possible, not probable, results.
The court observed that generally, in the absence of statute, a seller of liquor is not responsible for injury to the person who drinks it. It is true that such a 'Dram Shop Act' as not been enacted in Florida.
We feel that just here we must depart from the reasoning of the able...
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