Watts v. K, S & H

In Watts v. K, S & H, Ky., 957 S.W.2d 233 (1997) the plaintiff received a damage award in a jury trial on his negligence claim against a liquor store. The case involved four minor high school students who skipped school. Sometime in the morning, they purchased some alcohol from a liquor store in Lexington, Kentucky. The minor purchaser did not use false identification nor was he asked to produce identification by the clerk at the store. The four teenagers consumed the alcohol and went back to school at dismissal time. After school was over, two of the teenagers, neither of whom was the direct purchaser of the alcohol, while driving under the influence were involved in a head-on automobile collision. The collision killed Watts' father and left him catastrophically injured. Watts sued the liquor store that had sold the alcohol to the boys. The Court held that whether the liquor store could be held liable under the dram shop rule for Watts' injuries was a question for the jury: We must now determine whether, as a matter of law, reasonable minds could not differ in finding that the facts indicate a scenario which was clearly unforeseeable by Appellees. Keeping in mind that this case was contested on every issue, beginning with whether Appellees' store was the source of the alcohol purchased, and whether the clerk could have seen the car the teenagers were riding in at the time the purchase was made, we think it is not clearly unforeseeable that a member of a group of underage boys, who purchased a case of beer and a pint of rum on a school morning, would share his purchase with his companions and that one or more of those companions would drive that or another automobile, causing a disastrous collision. The Court in Pike contemplated just such a fact situation in allowing the cause of action to proceed. Although cautiously worded, that decision in no way forecloses this particular suit. Certainly, the proof issues are difficult and complex, but we have considered the record carefully and believe that this case was properly submitted to the jury to determine whether Appellees violated their statutory duty and whether that violation led to a series of events that could have been foreseen. (Id. at 239.) In Watts, the minor who caused the collision was not the minor who purchased the alcohol. The issue was whether the injuries were a foreseeable consequence of the liquor store selling alcohol to the minors. In Watts, only one of the minors went into the liquor store and it was disputed as to whether the clerk could see the others outside.