for selling to DWI drivers?

Quote:Some good news for the more litigious people in New Mexico showed up this week, though it may only be a temporary victory. In the case of Morris v. Giant Four Corners, Inc., the New Mexico State Supreme Court has ruled that gas stations may be held liable in lawsuits seeking damages after drunk drivers are involved in accidents. It wasn’t a unanimous decision and the reasoning behind it raises some significant questions, but the specific incident in question also hasn’t been decided. All the State Supreme Court was ruling on was the question of whether or not a gas station could be sued for serving an inebriated driver. The lower courts will still have to determine whether this ruling applies in the case of Gallup Deacon Marcellino Morris Jr., who was killed in an accident caused by Andy Denny in 2011. Denny had a blood alcohol content more than twice the legal limit and was driving down the wrong side of the highway at the time. (KRQE News)

so what, now gas station attendants are going to have to start conducting sobriety tests? It's maybe one thing when a customer may be so impaired that it's 100% obvious but what about someone like me who can have a buzz but never show it but would still fail a breathalyzer - or such was the case often back in my drinking days, days I do not miss btw.

USA 2021.

Idiot world.

I tried to find more information on the origin story of the case and couldn't find anything. They must have security footage of the driver being falling over himself drunk inside the store and they still sold him gas.

I feel like there is a lot more to the story than this article sheds light on.

Do we want low to minimum wage employees being the alcohol police?

Nothing was more infuriating to me in my college years than trying to run the front end of a grocery store 2 miles from the university shorthanded on a busy Friday night with the ALE hastling one of my cashiers.

It's not a cashiers job to enforce technicalities of a law

(07-23-2021 07:36 AM)solohawks Wrote:  Do we want low to minimum wage employees being the alcohol police?

Nothing was more infuriating to me in my college years than trying to run the front end of a grocery store 2 miles from the university shorthanded on a busy Friday night with the ALE hastling one of my cashiers.

It's not a cashiers job to enforce technicalities of a law

No, but when I was a bartender I had to accept responsibility of my actions. I knew if I overserved somebody I could be held legally accountable if that person leaves and kills someone. Doesn't matter that I have no control over how much they drank before they got there or if they are snorting xanax in the bathroom. The second they show signs of intoxication and you serve them your ass is in the sling. That's why any bar or restaurant that doesn't have cameras are begging for a lawsuit. I had a customer this year that someone left their restaurant and killed someone driving home. Family sued the store and the server that took care of them. They took their camera footage to court and receipts showing the guy was fine and didn't consume more than should have put him over the limit in their establishment. The best they figure they guy had a bottle in the car he must have thrown out of the window because he was 2x the legal limit when he was arrested.

Going back to the gas station clerk. No, they shouldn't be held to the standard of not serving someone over the legal limit. They don't have the capability to do that. However, if some drunk stumbling around wanders into the gas station slurring and tries to buy gas they at least have the moral duty to call the police and try to keep the guy from driving off. I see what the court is doing by trying to make it a legal duty, but like everything else our legal system does they are going way beyond what is common sense.

(07-23-2021 07:30 AM)bobdizole Wrote:  I tried to find more information on the origin story of the case and couldn't find anything. They must have security footage of the driver being falling over himself drunk inside the store and they still sold him gas.

I feel like there is a lot more to the story than this article sheds light on.

No idea how it works in New Mexico, but in Virginia it is self serve. Even if you do go in the store how is the cashier to know the customer is driving? If I've had too much, my wife drives and if we stop at the store, I always go in. This is a bad precedent.

(07-23-2021 07:59 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  

(07-23-2021 07:30 AM)bobdizole Wrote:  I tried to find more information on the origin story of the case and couldn't find anything. They must have security footage of the driver being falling over himself drunk inside the store and they still sold him gas.

I feel like there is a lot more to the story than this article sheds light on.

No idea how it works in New Mexico, but in Virginia it is self serve. Even if you do go in the store how is the cashier to know the customer is driving? If I've had too much, my wife drives and if we stop at the store, I always go in. This is a bad precedent.

I agree there are too many variables involved for this law to make sense. It make's me really wonder what went down in the case that spawned all of this.

I don't know about where everyone else lives, but I never interact with an attendant. I pump my own gas at the pump point-of-sale.

As the article mentioned, they'd have to physically interact with every customer or discontinue self-service.

They could always attach one of those things you have to blow into. I guess you'd have to have taken a super-vaccine to make sure you don't catch all kinds of crap.

Tennessee allows for those lawsuits to proceed, too.

Going to be hard pressed to prove the gas sold by that station was the gas used to get the person at the point of the wreck....

just because you stop for gas doesnt mean you couldnt have went farther a lot farther. So did they buy that gas while sober?. Even if you fill up when the warning light is on you have another 25 to 40 miles before you run out.

As to the self service there are states/cites that fine you if you pump your own. Or they use to dont know if that still the case...NYC is/was one of those