Under certain circumstances, a social host can be held liable if one of their guests drinks excessively at the function or party, then leaves while intoxicated, and consequently causes a motor vehicle accident.
In Hansen v. Sulyma, the Plaintiff was a passenger in a vehicle which had run out of gas, and pulled over to the side of the road. The Defendant, who was intoxicated after having been at a local pub, struck the vehicle in which the Plaintiff was a passenger in, rendering the Plaintiff a quadriplegic. While the Defendant was held to be mostly liable for the accident, the British Columbia Court of Appeal also found the pub to be 20% at fault.
[36] The law is clear, of course, that this court may not interfere with a trial judge’s apportionment of liability under the Negligence Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 333, unless there are “very strong and cogent reasons” for doing so: see Moses v. Kim 2009 BCCA 82 at para. 33. Even given this stringent standard, however, I am persuaded that the allocation of minimal responsibility to the pub defendants was grossly disproportionate to their comparative blameworthiness, including their disregard of their statutory obligations. We were referred to various cases involving host liability to injured third parties, including Menow v. Honsberger [1974] S.C.R. 239 (S.C.C.) and Laface v. McWilliams 2005 BCSC 291. In Laface, Kirkpatrick J. (as she then was) in turn quoted at para. 187 a passage from a judgment of Mackenzie J. in Lum (Guardian ad litem of) v. McLintock (1997) 45 B.C.L.R. (3d) 303 (B.C.S.C.), where she stated:
In pragmatic terms, responsibility placed on commercial hosts is likely to be most effective as a deterrent in keeping intoxicated drivers off the roads. The cost of damage awards should modify rational conduct of commercial hosts directed to maximizing economic advantage … [At para. 27.]
In all the cases of commercial host liability to which Ms. Wright referred us, liability of between 78% and 28.5% was apportioned to defendants in the position of the pub defendants in this instance.
[37] Notably, counsel for Mr. Sulyma made no submission at trial as to what portion of blameworthiness should be allocated to these defendants. The plaintiff submitted that the figure should be 5% and the trial judge simply adopted that submission, apparently without considering the precedents in this province that augur in favour of a considerably higher apportionment. Moreover, the trial judge’s suggestion that she would have allocated 75% of the liability to Mr. Leprieur if only two parties had been involved, and her effectively “crediting” him with the 5% seems illogical, with all due respect. The proper course was for the trial judge to consider the relative fault of all three parties (assuming, as counsel agreed, that the pub defendants could be treated as one for the purposes of this determination) and to determine the relative blameworthiness of each in comparison to the others.
[38] I would allow the appeal on this point and re-apportion 20% of the liability to the pub defendants, 70% to Mr. Leprieur, and 10% to Mr. Sulyma.