Alaska Bar Owners Not Liable for Injury Caused by Drunken Customers

Bar owners have traditionally been liable for injuries caused by intoxicated partrons, under Dram Shop liability.  The most common situation where dram shop liability arose is where a partron was over served alchol at the bar, became intoxicated and then drove drunk and cause and accident.  Because over serving a patron was against the law, the bar owner was liable for the damages caused by its unlawful actions. 

In Alaska, bar owners are now virtually immune from dram shop liability, though it is still unlawful to over serve a patron.  The Alaska Supreme Court recently  held that Alaska's fault allocation law requires the jury to allocate fault between both the drunk driver, the bar and the injured plaintiff.  Each defendant in the suit will only have to pay damages based upon the percentage of fault allocated against it by the jury.  When the fault of the drunk driver and the over serving bar owner is weighed, the jury will almost always allocate the lions share, if not 100%, of the fault against the drunk driver. 

If the drunk driver is allocated 100% of the fault, the bar owner will be allocated 0% of the fault.  And, the bar owner will pay nothing to the injured plaintiff. 

The effect of the court's decision will be that dram shop claims will no longer be pursued against liquor establishments in Alaska since the likelihood of recovering any damages will be extremely low.

If you have quesitons about injury law in Alaska, call  or email the Law Offices of Elliott T. Dennis, in Anchorage, Alaska at (907) 929-4890 or elliott@attorneydennis.com.