NEW JERSEY’S DRAM SHOP ACT: THE DUTY TO MONITORING

New Jersey Dram Shop Act (Act) limits the liability of licensed alcoholic beverage servers to two limited circumstances. One is where the license owner serves a minor and the other is when a visibly intoxicated patron is served.

Recently, the Supreme Court decided that a license owner did not have a responsibility to monitor the alcoholic beverage consumption of a guest who attend an affair hosted by a local community group. In that case, a drunk driver killed four of his friends in a motor vehicle accident after attending a pig roast, hosted by a social organization that held a limited liquor license where the guests were allowed to serve themselves from a special beer truck. At the time of the accident, the drunk driver had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.181% which was almost twice as high as the existing limit under the law. Notwithstanding, the drunk driver’s elevated BAC most accounts of the drunk driver’s symptomology at the event established that he was not visibly intoxicated and, as a result, the jury refused to impute liability to the license owner.

The question presented to the Supreme Court was whether a license owner has a separate duty to monitor the alcoholic beverage intake of a quest or patron, even though there was no evidence that the guest or patron was visibly intoxicated.

In answering, the question in the negative , the court noted that the Act which was conceived to address an insurance crisis in the liquor industry by striking a delicate balance between the rights of the victims of drunk drivers and the need to specifically define limited pockets of liability so as to allow license owners to purchase affordable liability policies. In order to accomplish this task, the legislators specifically limited the liability of license owners for the service of alcoholic beverages only to those circumstances where a minor or a visibly intoxicated patron is served. Continuing, the court further observed that these exclusive remedies were so plainly defined by the Act that they could not be exposed to any “judicial tinkering” by imposed a separate duty of monitoring.

This decision reinforces an already existing philosophy of judicial thought that the two exclusive theories of liability defined by the Act will be strictly construed in favor of the license owner.