Smith v. Merritt

In Smith v. Merritt, 940 S.W.2d 602, 608 (Tex. 1997), the Court held that, by enacting Chapter 106, section 106.06, prohibiting making alcohol available to minors, the Legislature did not intend to provide a negligence per se action against social hosts for serving alcohol to persons age eighteen to twenty. The Court stated that Title 1, Chapter 2 of the Code, which is known as the Dram Shop Act, "provides the exclusive cause of action for providing an alcoholic beverage to a person 18 years of age or older." The Court also observed that the Dram Shop Act only creates one civil cause of action - an action against commercial providers for serving obviously intoxicated persons - and does not create civil liability for serving alcohol to minors. Under these statutes, we held it "inconceivable that the Legislature would desire that the combination of Chapter 106 and Chapter 2 would result in negligence per se for social hosts but not for commercial providers" for serving alcohol to persons aged eighteen to twenty. Thus, we declined to recognize a per se civil action based on Chapter 106, section 106.06 for serving persons aged eighteen to twenty. At that time, we did not reach the question of whether a per se cause of action may exist for making alcohol available to persons under eighteen. See id.