Klar v. Dairy Farmers of Am.
| Docket Number | 29 WAP 2022,J-14-2023 |
| Decision Date | 22 August 2023 |
| Parties | DAVID KLAR, Appellant v. DAIRY FARMERS OF AMERICA, INC., A CORPORATION, AND ROGER J. WILLIAMS, AN INDIVIDUAL, Appellees |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
ARGUED: April 18, 2023
Appeal from the Order of the Superior Court entered December 17 2021 at No. 1280 WDA 2020, affirming the Order of the Court of Common Pleas of Lawrence County entered October 4, 2017 at No. 2015-10863.
OPINION
In Pennsylvania, civil liability arising from the provision of alcohol to visibly intoxicated persons lies at an intersection of statutory and decisional law. This case calls upon us to revisit precedents that have prevailed for half a century and that impose such liability upon persons and entities licensed to engage in the commercial sale of alcohol while limiting the liability of non-licensees and "social hosts." The lower courts applied these precedents to conclude that an organization which hosted an event at which alcohol was provided, but was not a liquor licensee, could not be held liable for injuries caused by a guest who became intoxicated at the event. Finding no basis to disturb the long-settled law of Pennsylvania, we affirm.
As the instant appeal arises from a grant of judgment on the pleadings, we take the relevant facts as alleged in the complaint filed by the injured party, David Klar. On August 17, 2014, Dairy Farmers of America, Inc. ("DFA") sponsored a golf outing for its employees at Tanglewood Golf Course in Mercer County. As a condition of attendance, DFA required employees to provide a "monetary contribution to offset costs and expenses" associated with the event, which it used to pay for items such as "greens fees, food and alcohol."[1] One of DFA's employees, Roger Williams, made the contribution and attended the golf outing. According to Klar, DFA had reason to know that Williams was an alcoholic and that he previously had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. At the event, Williams' alcohol consumption was unsupervised, and he drank beyond the point of visible intoxication.
At about 5:45 p.m., with a blood alcohol concentration of approximately 0.23%- nearly three times the legal limit[2] to drive in Pennsylvania-Williams departed the golf outing in his car. As he drove north along State Route 18, Williams encountered Klar, who was operating a motorcycle in the southbound lane. Williams swerved across the center line into Klar's path. The resulting collision caused Klar to suffer numerous and grievous injuries.
Klar sued both Williams and DFA, contending that they were jointly and severally liable for his injuries. Klar's cause of action against Williams was straightforward. As for DFA, Klar asserted that it should be held liable due to its acts of "furnishing, serving and providing Williams alcohol" when DFA "knew or should have known Williams was visibly intoxicated and/or a habitual drunkard."[3] Although Klar emphasized that DFA collected funds from its employees to pay for the event, he did not allege that DFA realized any profit from the sale of alcohol, nor that DFA intended to do so. Rather, Klar described a communal pooling of money, used collectively to purchase items to be shared among the event's attendees, including alcohol. DFA ultimately filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that it could not be held liable for Klar's injuries because it was not a "licensee" for purposes of the Liquor Code,[4] that it did not take on "licensee status" by virtue of the funds it collected to pay for the golf outing, and that it was instead merely a "social host" that was not responsible for the actions of its guest.
The trial court granted the motion and dismissed Klar's claims against DFA. With regard to the theory of negligence per se arising from a purported violation of Section 493(1) of the Liquor Code ("Section 493(1)" or the "Dram Shop Act"),[5] the trial court found that the question of DFA's liability effectively was answered by this Court's decision in Manning v. Andy, in which we stated that "[o]nly licensed persons engaged in the sale of intoxicants have been held to be civilly liable to injured parties," and rejected the imposition of Dram Shop liability upon "nonlicensed persons" who "furnish intoxicants for no remuneration."[6] Because DFA was not licensed to sell alcohol, it appeared to fit into the latter category. However, the trial court recognized that Klar had at least plausibly suggested that DFA's collection of funds from its employees could constitute a "sale" of alcohol or the receipt of "remuneration" for it. Indeed, the Liquor Code defines a "sale" broadly to "include any transfer of liquor, alcohol or malt or brewed beverages for a consideration."[7] Given this wide-ranging definition, the trial court reasoned that "collective action to purchase alcohol presents a problem of consistency" with the proposition that social hosts are not exposed to liability.[8] For instance, the trial court hypothesized, "[i]f two friends were to come to an agreement whereby one person were to purchase food, and the other person were to purchase alcohol, and they were to share both, under contract principles of 'consideration,' that agreement would qualify" as a "sale" by a strict reading of the definition.[9] But under any reasonable understanding of what it means to be a "social host," the trial court opined, it would be absurd to conclude that such sharing would constitute a "sale" of alcohol from one friend to the other that would trigger liability under the Dram Shop Act.
Essentially, because DFA pooled its employees' money to purchase alcohol that they all shared, the trial court concluded that the instant circumstance was more analogous to the hypothetical friends sharing a meal and a drink than to the unlicensed commercial sale of alcohol. This conclusion was bolstered by the "non-proportional distribution of the alcoholic beverages" at the golf outing, i.e., that there was no "relation between the amount of alcohol consumed at the event . . . and the amount to be paid in reimbursement of the cost of the alcohol."[10] That is, the alcohol was available to all of the attendees on a self-serve basis, and no one was accepting money on a per-drink basis, as one might expect from an enterprise engaged in the business of selling alcohol. In sum, the trial court reasoned:
For negligence per se under the Dram Shop Act, the Plaintiff bears the burden of showing the Defendant is either a licensee, or stepped into the shoes of a licensee. The payment of a fee in this case to [defray] the cost of the golf outing as a whole, with alcohol being only an incidental aspect of the fee which also provided for food and the golfing itself, without profit or other indicia of commercial sale of liquor, does not satisfy the burden of the Plaintiff to meet all the elements of its cause of action.[11]
Apart from the theory of negligence per se derived from the asserted violation of the Dram Shop Act, the trial court further rejected any claim against DFA sounding in ordinary common-law negligence principles. On this score, the trial court reasoned that Klar's claim was foreclosed by this Court's decision in Klein v. Raysinger, which held that social hosts are not subject to liability in common-law negligence for the actions of their guests, because, "in the case of an ordinary able bodied man it is the consumption of the alcohol, rather than the furnishing of the alcohol, which is the proximate cause of any subsequent occurrence."[12] Because the trial court already had deemed DFA to be a social host rather than a de facto liquor licensee, and "given that no common law negligence action exists in Pennsylvania against a social host" per Klein,[13] the court reasoned that Klar's claim was barred as a matter of law.
On Klar's appeal, the Superior Court affirmed.[14] It agreed with the trial court's application of the above precedents in all material respects. In so doing, the Superior Court rejected certain arguments that Klar now reiterates before this Court. Principally, Klar emphasized that, this Court's decision in Manning notwithstanding, the language of the Dram Shop Act facially applies to a much broader range of persons and entities than just "licensees," inasmuch as it prohibits "any licensee or the board,[15] or any employe, servant or agent of such licensee or of the board, or any other person" from selling, furnishing, or giving alcohol to a visibly intoxicated person.[16] Although DFA indisputably was not a "licensee," Klar contended that it fell into the category of "any other person," and thus was subject to the Dram Shop Act. As support, Klar cited the Superior Court's 1957 decision in Commonwealth v. Randall,[17] which held that, at least in the criminal context, "any other person" includes non-licensees.
The Superior Court did not dispute Klar's characterization of Randall, but it emphasized that Randall was a criminal case. The instant case, like this Court's decision in Manning, was civil in nature. And in the civil context, the Superior Court stated, Manning suggests that "DFA, as a non-licensee, is not subject to the standard applicable to licensees under Section 4-493(1)."[18] On the Superior Court's reading of Manning, by holding that the non-licensee defendants in that case could not be held civilly liable for a violation of the Dram Shop Act, this Court effectively "held that the statutory phrase 'any other person' did not encompass non-licensees."[19]
As in the trial court, Klar sought to distinguish Manning on the basis that DFA collected money from its employees to pay for the alcohol at the golf outing....
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