Business 8th Edition by Marianne Jennings

Exercise 9

Is Beer Inherently Dangerous?
Facts
Christine Mary Greif was stopped on a bicycle on the edge of Route 4 in Farmington, Connecticut, when a motor vehicle driven by Elmer Michaud crossed over the roadway and struck her, causing serious injuries to her. Mr. Michaud had consumed Anheuser-Busch (defendants) products and was under their influence. Mr. Michaud was found guilty of assault in the second degree with a motor vehicle and served two years in prison. The Greifs filed a civil suit against him for damages but do not indicate the status of that suit. Mr. Michaud may be judgment-proof or close to it.
The products in question are beer and beer-type beverages (e.g., light beer, malt liquor, and other alcoholic beverages). Mr. Michaud was driving while intoxicated and was charged with a violation of Connecticut General Statutes § 14-227.
Mrs. Greif, and her husband, Robert Charles Grief (plaintiffs), filed suit under Connecticut's Products Liability Act, maintaining that the beer was defective because it contained alcohol, which can lead to intoxication and thereby impair the consumer's ability to drive, and that the manufacturers have breached warranties made to consumers. The Greifs also alleged that Anheuser-Busch failed to warn about the dangers of drinking their products and has made misrepresentations about them.
Judicial Opinion
GOETTEL, District Judge
Beer has been brewed for tens of thousands of years, although the method of making beer in ancient times varied greatly from place to place. Beer is brewed by fermentation in which microscopic fungi known as yeast consume sugars in the grain, converting them to alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. Typically, a beer contains from two to six percent alcohol.
While beer is a relatively mild form of alcoholic beverage, the complaint alleges, and everyone knows, that anyone who consumes enough of any product containing alcohol will become, to some degree, inebriated. Indeed, the complaint alleges that the defendants should have known that some consumers like Mr. Michaud would drink to excess and that intoxication impairs motor skills including driving. According to paragraph 22 of the complaint, the defendants should reduce the intoxicating effects of the products by lowering or removing the alcohol content. In effect, the complaint alleges that the defendants produced a product that can and does have anti-social effects and should be banned or, at the least, the manufacturer should be responsible for all ultimate misuse of the product by consumers. This essentially is a call for the return of Prohibition, the "great experiment" which not only failed seventy years ago but, according to some, actually led to a substantial increase in the drinking of alcoholic beverages.
At first blush, the theories of the complaint are so bizarre that one is tempted not to treat them seriously However, similar types of suits have been brought in recent years concerning other products with at least some degree of success. For example, suits against gun manufacturers brought by the estates of persons killed by criminals using legally manufactured guns (or brought by those who had supplied medical assistance to those injured in such events) are a recent phenomenon. See, e.g., Hamilton v Beretta USA. Corp., Nos. 99-7753, 7785, 7787, 2000 WL1160699 (2d Cir. August 16,2000) (certifying certain questions to the New York Court of Appeals).
There is of course no way in which a product containing alcohol can be marketed so as to prevent the type of criminal conduct engaged in by Michaud in this case. Moreover, the Connecticut Products Liability Act, on which the plaintiffs rely, requires proof that the product is unreasonably dangerous, i.e., that it must be dangerous to an extent beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary consumer who purchases it, with the ordinary knowledge common to the community as to its characteristics.
"Good whiskey is not unreasonably dangerous merely because it will make some people drunk, and is especially dangerous to alcoholics...." A beverage is not unreasonably dangerous because it contains alcohol, providing that its presence is disclosed. The Connecticut courts have consistently held that the potential risks of alcohol intoxication and drunk driving are matters of common knowledge. Consumers expect there to be alcohol in beer and should anticipate that, if they have more than one or two, they will experience a degree of intoxication. The product was not, therefore, defective.
Turning to the plaintiffs' failure to warn claim, it too mimics another new style of case. In recent tobacco litigations, plaintiffs have claimed that, while they were aware of the serious health risks involved in smoking (indeed, they could hardly deny it, since the Surgeon General's warnings have been on cigarette packages for many years), the manufacturers knew of dangerous aspects of their products beyond those commonly understood and therefore were responsible for the smokers' continued addiction. Such cases were not generally successful until a recent huge Florida class action verdict which has now been removed to federal court. Engle v R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., No. 00-CV-2641 (removal on July 24, 2000 following July 14, 2000 jury verdict awarding $145 billion punitive damages in state court, No. 94-8273-CA-22 (Fla.Cir.Ct.)). Plaintiffs maintain that while there may have been a common understanding about the risks of consuming alcohol and driving, recent studies have indicated the dangers to be greater than had previously been understood and that therefore the existing case law should be ignored. Plaintiffs cite no new breakthrough in the study of alcoholic beverages which could produce such a change. Plaintiffs rely on Burton v R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 884 RSupp. 1515 (D.Kan. 1995), but that case rests on the fact that the plaintiff began smoking some sixty years ago, so that, the Court held, the state of knowledge concerning smoking's dangers were not as well known. (Perhaps they were not, but even in the thirties, cigarettes were referred to as "coffin nails")
Among other tilings, the plaintiffs claim the defendants failed to warn consumers and the general public that consumption level effects of products differ from person to person, so that an amount which may not cause inebriation in one consumer might do so to another. We doubt that there is any practical way of conveying such a warning in a meaningful way, but there is clearly no claim that any doubts in that regard were the proximate cause of Mr. Michaud's drunkenness.
Those who drink a substantial amount of alcohol within a relatively short period of time are given clear warning that to avoid possible criminal behavior they must refrain from driving.... Considering also today's heightened level of public awareness regarding the problem, we cannot believe that any person who drives after drinking would be unaware of the possibility that his blood-alcohol level might equal or exceed the statutory standard....
As if the foregoing were not enough, pursuant to the Alcohol Beverage Labeling Act of 1988, XI U.S.C. §§ 213 et seq., every bottle or can of beer brewed and sold in the United States contains a federally mandated warning that "consumption of alcohol beverages impairs your ability to drive a car...." 27 U.S.C. § 215(a). That warning was required not because of newly discovered evidence of the effects of alcohol but rather as a "reminder" of such hazards. 27 U.S.C. § 213.
In the final analysis, the plaintiffs cannot prevail against the defendants, because the sole proximate cause of their injuries was the conduct of the drunken driver whose excessive use of alcoholic beverages intoxicated him but who nevertheless drove in a dangerous condition causing injury to the plaintiffs. While the dram shop laws under appropriate circumstances can create liability on the part of those who serve alcoholic beverages, a claim cannot be made against the manufacturer "for the reason that the subsequent injury has been held to have been proximately caused by the intervening act of the immoderate consumer whose voluntary and imprudent consumption of the beverage brings about intoxication and the subsequent injury." Consequently we GRANT the motion to dismiss.
Is beer defective because of a lack of warning?