It’s the Law: The laws, they are a-changing

One of the more dastardly problems with laws is that they keep changing.
In my August column, I wrote about the problems teenagers have making decisions, especially where alcohol is concerned. I also mentioned that there is immunity from civil liability for anyone who provides alcohol to a person who subsequently gets hurt or hurts someone else as a result of being intoxicated. Five days after my column was printed, the legislature changed the law — at least to a degree.
Now, when an adult “knowingly” furnishes alcohol “at his or her residence” to anyone younger than 21 years of age, that person no longer has immunity from civil liability if the youngster hurts himself or others. (I’m going to call all people under the age of 21 “minors” for purposes of this column.)
In December 2008, Shelby Allen, a 17-year-old girl from Redding, died of alcohol poisoning at a friend’s home. The friend’s parents were in the house, told the kids not to drink and then went to bed. Clearly, Shelby made some bad decisions, but there is a strong argument that the adults present could have and should have done more than simply tell the kids not to drink. When efforts to seek criminal prosecution of the adults failed, Shelby’s parents turned to the civil courts, only to run into the immunity provisions in California law. One of our legislators got hold of this tragic story and persuaded a near-unanimous Assembly to partially abrogate the immunity.
You may note that the exception to the immunity is quite narrow. At least in theory, if an adult walks 5 feet off his property and hands a fifth of whiskey to a minor, who later wraps the car around a tree killing his buddies, that adult still has immunity from civil liability.
Why, you might ask, does an adult have civil liability if alcohol is provided to a minor at his home but not at, say, the local bar? What is the difference? Our more honest legislators will admit that they don’t have the political capital to overcome the tremendous resistance from bars and alcohol suppliers if they were to insist that the bars bear civil liability for plying minors with alcohol. Then again, I suppose we should applaud our lawmakers for doing something, even if it doesn’t address the entire problem.
And where do we draw the line on “knowingly”? Logic tells us that the parents who went to bed knew that the girls had a propensity to drink and also knew that there was alcohol readily available. Otherwise, there would be no need to warn them not to drink. Does the knowledge that the girls would drink, coupled with the knowledge that there was ample alcohol in the house, rise to the level of “knowingly” furnishing alcohol? I suspect that this will be a question posed to a judge some time in the future.
And, of course, this change in the law doesn’t do anything for the parent who “negligently” allows a minor to get alcohol. Teenagers have multiple tactics for getting alcohol from adults who simply are not paying enough attention. The most common is the failure to keep alcohol under lock and key. A favorite tactic of teenagers of divorced parents is to tell Mom that she is staying with Dad that night. Mom doesn’t bother to check, Dad is out of town, the teenager opens up the house and the alcohol flows.
The vast majority of us will not knowingly supply alcohol to our children, but I assure you that it happens. Indeed, I have seen it not only supplied, but encouraged.
Even though there is no law exposing us to civil liability for negligently allowing children access to alcohol, it bears repeating that the most likely reason our teenage children will die or be seriously hurt will have some connection to alcohol. Law or no law, that is reason enough to take extra precautions with your teenager. Will they like your added scrutiny? No, but they will come back alive.
Gary Redenbacher of Scotts Valley is an attorney in private practice. Contact him at ga**@re*********.com.