Today, the Arizona Court of Appeals vacated a $7,903,494.58 Dram Shop judgment against JAI Dining Services and remanded it for a new trial because the trial judge failed to give an appropriate jury instruction on causation. The plaintiff was rear-ended by a drunk driver and badly injured. Plaintiff sued the driver and JAI where he had been drinking that evening. The court acknowledged that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that JAI did not exercise reasonable care while serving its partron, but concluded that there was also sufficient evidence to support an instruction that the patron’s actions after he left JAI were superseding, intervening causes of the accident that could relieve the bar of any liability.
After he left JAI, the patron drove to a friend’s house, then his girlfriend’s house where she pleaded with him not to drive, then left and rear-ended the plaintiff. The legal issue was whether those stops between JAI and the accident were “places of repose” which might make it unforeseeable that he would leave and cause an accident.
JAI requested a jury instruction that accurately tracked Arizona law on superseding, intervening cause but it was rejected by the trial judge as adequately covered by a more general causation instruction. The Court of Appeals held that, if properly instructed, the jury may have returned a verdict in favor of JAI and, therefore, the trial judge abused his discretion in not giving JAI’s requested instruction.
Dupray v. JAI Dining Services (Phoenix), Inc, No. 1 CA-CV 17-0599, filed 11-15-2018
