“A person hosts a party. Guests drink alcohol. An inebriated guest drives away and causes an accident in which another person is injured. Is the host liable to the person injured?” This terse paragraph was addressed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2006.
The case arose from a BYOB New Years Eve party hosted by a couple named Dwight Courrier and Julie Zimmerman. The only alcohol served by the hosts was a single bottle of champagne shared among the guests at midnight. One guest was Desmond Desormeaux, a heavy drinker with two prior convictions for impaired driving. The hosts were friends of Desormeaux and were aware of his drinking and driving history. While at the party, Desormeaux drank a dozen beer in about 2.5 hours. Courrier accompanied Desormeaux to his car as he left the party and asked if he was okay to drive. Desormeaux replied he was fine and drove away. His blood-alcohol concentration at the time he left was estimated to be about triple the legal limit. Tragically, he drove into oncoming traffic and struck another vehicle head-on. One of the passengers in the other car, a teenager named Zoe Childs, was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Childs sued Desormeaux and the hosts of the party. Desormeaux’s liability was easy to prove but the notion of “social host liability” had never been ruled on by the Supreme Court of Canada before. Childs argued that social host liability was a natural development of the well-recognized tort of “commercial host liability” whereby bars, taverns and other liquor-serving establishments could be held liable for serving alcohol to an inebriated customer who went on to harm himself or someone else. However, the court rejected this argument and ruled that social hosts were distinct from commercial hosts for a number of reasons: first, commercial hosts were in a much better position to monitor the alcohol consumption of their guests; second, laws and regulations existed to govern the operation of commercial hosts; and third, there was a profit motive for commercial hosts.
As a result, Childs could not rely on the old commercial host cases and would have to establish, for the first time, that social hosts owed a “duty of care” to third parties like her. To do so, Childs would have to show that the likelihood of her injuries was reasonably foreseeable by the hosts.
The court rejected this argument as well and found that Child’s injuries were not foreseeable by the hosts. There was no evidence that Desormeaux displayed signs of intoxication (despite his high blood-alcohol level) during his brief interactions with the hosts. Further, just because the hosts were aware of his previous impaired driving did not imply that they should have known he was drunk driving on this particular evening.
In addition, the court held that to find the hosts liable would amount to ignoring the principle of personal responsibility. On behalf of the court, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote: “A person who accepts an invitation to attend a private party does not park his autonomy at the door…. The guest remains responsible for his or her conduct.”
The court did not entirely close the door on social host liability but narrowed its possibility to circumstances where the host took an active role in increasing risk; for example, by continuing “to serve alcohol to a visibly inebriated person knowing that he or she will be driving home”.
The court ruled Desormeaux was entirely liable for Childs’ injuries. Unfortunately, his car was uninsured. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for various criminal charges stemming from the accident.
