State for Use of Joyce v. Hatfield

• Citation: 78 A.2d 754,197 Md. 249
• Decision Date: 09 February 1951
• Docket Number: No. 92,92
• Parties: STATE for Use of JOYCE et al. v. HATFIELD et al.
• Court: Court of Appeals of Maryland

Page 249

197 Md. 249

78 A.2d 754

STATE for Use of JOYCE et al. v. HATFIELD et al.

No. 92.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 9, 1951.

Lewin Wethered and L. Wethered Barroll, Baltimore (Paul Berman, Sigmund Levin, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellants.

Michael Paul Smith, Baltimore, for appellees.

Before MARBURY, C. J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, HENDERSON and MARKELL, JJ.

MARKELL, Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment on demurrer to the declaration in a suit under Lord Campbell's act.

The equitable plaintiff is the widow of James L. Joyce. The declaration alleges that: Defendants operate a tavern remote from settlements and only accessible to persons operating automobiles. They knowingly sold intoxicating liquors to Frank M. Love, a minor customer, in violation of Article 2B, section 103, of the Code, and knowingly continued to sell to him in further violation of that section after he had become intoxicated, or at a stage of his intoxication, when defendants in the exercise of due care should have known he was becoming helplessly intoxicated by consumption of such liquor and therefore unable to operate the automobile, in which he had driven himself and others to the tavern, safely away from the premises. Defendants should, by the exercise of reasonable care, have known that the natural and probable consequence of their unlawful conduct in continuing to sell to an already intoxicated minor would cause Love to be unfit to operate his automobile. Defendants negligently and recklessly permitted Love to leave the premises operating his automobile while intoxicated. Directly as a result of defendants' negligent and unlawful conduct a collision occurred when Love in this intoxicated condition left the tavern, operating the automobile at an excessive and unlawful speed, so that he drove to the left of the center of the highway, failing to have the automobile under proper control, and suddenly, without warning, collided with the automobile driven by Joyce, while Joyce was in the exercise of due care, and as a result of the collision Joyce died the next day. It is not alleged that defendants knew, or the fact was, that none of the other persons in Love's automobile was able, and in a fit condition, to drive it, or that defendants knew Love intended to drive it.

The demurrer was sustained on the ground that the proximate cause of the collision was not the unlawful sale of liquor but the negligence of the person who drank the liquor.

In Dunlap v. Wagner, 1882, 85 Ind. 529, the plaintiff lent a horse, apparently to a son or other relative, to be driven in a sleigh. The defendant, a liquor dealer, unlawfully sold to the borrower, the driver, liquor which the driver consumed on the defendant's premises. The driver became intoxicated to the state of unconsciousness. '* * * while in this state, and incapable of controlling the horses, [the driver] was placed in the sleigh, and the horses started homeward by [the defendant]'. 85 Ind. 530. The horses ran away, and the plaintiff's horse was killed. In the course of its opinion the court said, 'A man who, in violation of law makes another helplessly drunk, and then places him in a situation where his drunken condition is likely to bring harm to himself or injury to others, may well be deemed guilty of an actionable wrong independently of any statute. But we have a statute which provides that every person shall have a right of action for an injury resulting to person or property against one who shall, by selling intoxicating liquors to another, have caused the intoxication of the person by, or through whom, the injury is done.' 85 Ind. 530. The defendant was held liable, under the statute, for the value of the plaintiff's horse.

We may assume, without deciding, that on such facts the defendant would be 'guilty of an actionable wrong independently of any statute', not, however, for making the driver drunk by selling him liquor, but for placing him bodily, in a state of unconsciousness, in the sleigh and starting the horses. This court has adopted the statement in the Restatement, Torts, § 390 [in a tentative draft, § 260], 'One who supplies directly or through a third person a chattel for the use of another whom the supplier knows or from facts known to him should know to be likely because of his youth, inexperience or otherwise, to use it in a manner involving unreasonable risk of bodily harm to himself and others whom the supplier should expect to share in, or be in the vicinity of its use is subject to liability for bodily harm caused thereby to them'. Rounds v. Phillips, 166 Md. 151, 170 A. 532; Id., 168 Md. 120, 177 A. 174, applied this principle to parents who supplied an automobile to their son, an habitually reckless and drunken driver. Cf. Houlihan v. McCall, Md., 78 A.2d 661, just decided, in which we recognize the principle as applicable to relations other than that of parent and child, but hold it immaterial and irrelevant when the supplier and the supplied are master and servant or employer and employee, and the master is admittedly liable for the negligence, if any, of the servant which caused the injuries in question. See also Dixon v. Bell, 1816, 5 M.&S. 198, holding liable the owner of a loaded pistol, who sent for it a servant too yound and not fit to be trusted with it, who in turn, accidentally but negligently, shot the plaintiff.

Evils of intoxication are of record as far back as Noah. They have never been unknown in Maryland. Intoxication is not an excuse for crime, Blackstone, Commentaries, Vol. 4, pp. 25-261, or for torts. Blackstone said, 'there are many wholesome statutes * * *, chiefly passed in the * * * reign of king James I., which regulate the licensing of alehouses, and punish persons found tippling therein; or the master of such houses permitting them.' Vol. IV, p. 64. In this country (apparently not in England) many civil damage statutes, varying in their scope and their provisions but more or less similar to the Indiana statute above referred to, have from time to time been enacted, creating rights of action for injuries against those who, by selling intoxicating liquors, 'caused' the intoxication of the person through whom the injuries were done. In many of the statutes the liability is based on selling, not only unlawful selling. Civil damage statutes were enacted at least as early as 1853 in Indiana, Struble v. Nodwift, 1858, 11 Ind. 64; 1854 in Ohio, Mulford v. Clewell, 1871, 21 OhioSt. 191; 1857 in New York, Bertholf v. O'Reilly, 74 N.Y. 509, 518; 1858 in Maine, Currier v. McKee, 99 Me. 364, 366, 59 A. 442; and...