In May, a California judge approved a $1.2 million settlement agreement for a drunk driving crash that injured two sisters standing on a street corner. And last March, the North Carolina mother of Laura Fortenberry, whose death in a DUI crash eventually resulted in North Carolina’s Laura’s Law, one of the nation’s toughest pieces of DUI legislation, filed a lawsuit related to her daughter’s death.
But the interesting part: Both lawsuits claim the parents of the drivers responsible for the DUI crashes are liable.
In the California case, the plaintiffs claimed that the parents of then 35-year-old Michael Tweedie, who injured 13 and 15 year old sisters in 2009, “lit the wick of the bomb” by purchasing a pick-up truck for their son after three previous DUIs (and numerous other criminal offenses), allowing him access to a joint bank account from which he continued to purchase alcohol after entering a second-time DUI offender program, and generally having knowledge that their son continued to drink and pose a risk to the community. Tweedie himself testified that his parents were aware that he never stopped using alcohol after being discharged from the Sonoma County jail in 2006.
After hitting the two sisters, Michael then fled the scene. He was found 4 hours later with a BAC of .17. There is no conclusive evidence that the drinking was before or after the actual crash according to the article. Michael was later sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading no contest.
In the North Carolina case, Fortenberry’s mom, Michelle Armstrong, claims that the parents of Howard Pasour, a multiple DUI offender now serving 21 to 28 years in prison without parole, are responsible because they allowed their son to continue driving their 1997 Jeep with a revoked license. According to the lawsuit, Pasour’s parents had told his girlfriend that “he is going to kill someone some day because of his continued habit of drinking and driving impaired.” Pasour was 28 when he killed Fortenberry.
Obviously, in both cases, both drivers had serious problems with alcohol and a proven record of making poor decisions. But neither was a minor. Far from it. So should the parents’ knowledge of the situation make them financially liable? To what level is a parent, or anyone else, liable for someone else’s actions? And should the liability be limited to parents? Given the fact the offenders were adults, should it extend to spouses, siblings, or even close friends with knowledge of the addiction and the risky behavior?
Let us know what you think.
It’s already law in many states that the consequences of over-serving alcohol extend to the host. Social hosts can be legally liable if they recklessly encourage a guest to continue drinking when it is clear they are drunk. Most states also place liability on social hosts in situations where alcohol is served to a minor or where the host should have recognized and stopped serving an obviously intoxicated guest.
The cases outlined above seek to extend the liability to different situations than do today’s social host laws but the irresponsibility of the parents in the cases mentioned is just as dangerous as that of the irresponsible social host
In the two cases outlined above, it is crystal clear that both sets of parents knew exactly what their children were doing with respect to drinking and driving. In fact, they even contributed to the behavior. While the parents didn’t actually put the “gun in their hands,”, they certainly made it easy for the two killers to find the gun — and the bullets!
In both these cases, the parents should be held responsible in part for the terrible decisions. But at the end of the day, most of the blame is on the two that made the irresponsible decisions to continue to drink and drive. These two weren’t capable of making rational decisions because of their deep addiction to alcohol…not an excuse, but certainly an illustration of the importance of attacking the root cause of the problem instead of the symptom. These two never made it to sober; they were in the constant state of drunk! A great warning for parents: know what your kids are doing because if you’re not, the law will eventually come down on you.