Dwight mentioned this story to me, and at first I thought it was a joke, but its apparently just another manifestation of The Crazy Years. “New Mexico Court Rules Gas Stations Liable for Selling Fuel to Drunk Drivers”:
Drunk driving is dangerous. The NHTSA says that someone is killed every 52 minutes due to a preventable crash where at least one party behind the wheel is intoxicated. Now, the New Mexico Supreme Court is looking to hold gas stations accountable for their role in knowingly allowing drunk drivers to hit the road.
Last week the court ruled 3-to-1 that gas stations have a “duty of care” to not allow individuals who are intoxicated to purchase fuel. In fact, the ruling goes as far as to edict that any gas station which knowingly permits drunk drivers to fuel up their vehicles can be held liable for any injuries caused by that person behind the wheel while they are intoxicated.
New Mexico is the second such state in the U.S. to publish a ruling which places the burden of responsibility on gas stations—Tennessee was the first. However, it’s important to note that there is no state law that explicitly prohibits the sale of gasoline to an intoxicated party in New Mexico. The court instead cited a fatal accident that occurred in 2011 where a gas station sold fuel to an intoxicated person who later got into an accident and killed the driver of the vehicle that was hit.
How are they going to prove the “knowingly” part when so many sales are pay-at-the-pump with a credit card these days?
This is part and parcel of the drive to disassociate people from blame for their own actions and failures and displace it to large faceless entities that the left must rail against (corporations, “white supremacy,” capitalism). The person responsible for a DUI is the person who drives drunk.
Tags: DUI, New Mexico, Regulation
Breathalyzers at the pump? I could see it, despite the sanitation issues. “If it saves just one life!”, right? We’ll ignore how many others it *costs*.
So if the government allows a alcoholic illegal alien to remain in this county it should be responsible for injuries he causes?
I am quite familiar with the Tennessee case. The gas station refused to sell alcohol to the drunk driver and then when the drunk driver was no inebriated that he could not pump his own gas, the clerk pumped the gas for him. It was readily provable the drunk driver would have run out of gas before he fatally wounded an innocent victim. In this case, but for the actiona of the clerk, the drunk driver would not have been on the road.
My guess: This is insurance driven. Plaintiffs’ attorneys can’t make any money suing uninsured motorists (of which I imagine the percentage is high in NM). But if they can successfully sue the gas station there will be an insurance policy that will pay off.
This does not change the fact that you are correct on where the responsibility lies.
Without having reviewed the decision, my initial response is that NM and Ta-nehisi gas stations may have to remove their pay-at-the-pump systems. The legal necessity of that action turns on the question of whether the stations are considered liable only if an employee happens to notice that a driver is drunk, versus being liable for all its customers’ sobriety regardless of whether a human is involved in the gasoline sales process or otherwise sees the customer. If the latter, and stations are compelled to remove the convenience of at-the-pump payment systems, then the only logical response is for these states to pass laws explicitly removing liability from the stations.
“So if the government allows a alcoholic illegal alien to remain in this county it should be responsible for injuries he causes?”
no, it’s your responsibility for allowing such a government. so they’ll punish you.
The trial lawyers long ago set out to take over the State Supreme Courts. The goal is to make sure deep pockets can be reached.
Mike in comment #4 pretty much has it. It’s driven by insurance and the legal concept of joint and several liability (sue the one what has the deepest pockets for the whole shebang, even if their involvement is objectively minimal).
Like Polly, I have not reviewed the decision, but I think that the opposite solution might apply, and that the stations will separate the gas pumps, card or cash into the machine only, from the convenience store, which will not accept payments for gas at all.
The decision was 3-1. The sane one just retired:
https://news.ballotpedia.org/2021/06/30/new-mexico-supreme-court-justice-barbara-vigil-retires/
So a district that knowingly allows someone to cast an illegal vote will be held accountable?