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Rojas v. Engineered Plastic Designs3/13/2003
ts on the liability of social hosts have treated an employer as a social host where the employer is not in the business of selling alcohol beverages. See Beeson v. Scoles Cadillac Corp., 506 So. 2d 999 (Ala. 1987)(employer that hosted party on its premises and provided alcoholic beverages free of charge to its employees was a social host and not liable under dram shop act); Mulvihill v. Union Oil Co., 859 P.2d 1310, 1313 (Alaska 1993)(holding that "it would be unwise and unfair to create what amounts to an exception to [the Alaska statute] by holding employers to a different liability standard than other social hosts"); Vaughan v. Hair, 645 So. 2d 1177 (La. Ct. App. 1994)(employer who permitted employees to drink alcoholic beverages on its premises after finishing their work considered a social host); Behnke v. Pierson, 21 Mich. App. 219, 175 N.W.2d 303 (1970)(statute that made no provision for holding social host liable applied to employer acting as a social host); Meany v. Newell, 367 N.W.2d 472 (Minn. 1985)(refusing to distinguish employer from other social hosts and holding that employer providing intoxicating beverages to employee at employer sponsored party on employer's premises is a social host); David M. Holliday, Annotation, Intoxicating Liquors: Employer's Liability for Furnishing or Permitting Liquor on Social Occasion, 51 A.L.R. 4th 1048, § 5 (1987).
Further, if we were to construe § 12-47-801(4) to exclude employers from the definition of "social hosts," the statute would exclude liability for an employer who willfully and knowingly provides an alcohol beverage to a person under the age of twenty-one years. Such a construction would violate the legislative intent to provide a cause of action in such circumstances. See § 12-47-801(4)(a)(I), C.R.S. 2002.
Accordingly, we conclude that § 12-47-801(4) applies to an employer who acts as a social host, that EPD was acting here as a social host, and that EPD is not liable because the exceptions to § 12-47-801(4) do not apply in this situation.
Therefore, plaintiffs' wrongful death, negligence, and negligent supervision claims are barred by § 12-47-801(4). See Charlton v. Kimata, supra (prior version of statute precluded plaintiffs' common law negligence claims against social host for furnishing alcoholic beverages to adult guest).
II.
Plaintiffs also contend that the trial court erred in dismissing their outrageous conduct claim. Again, we disagree. The plain language of § 12-47-801(4)(a) states that a defendant cannot be held civilly liable for injuries suffered because of the intoxication of an adult to whom the defendant has provided alcohol beverages as a social host.
Here the evidence showed only that EPD made beer available to the employee and that EPD's officers did not prevent the employee from driving. This conduct can not be considered outrageous in the context of plaintiffs' claim and does not remove EPD from the protection of § 12-47-801.
Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court properly dismissed plaintiffs' claim for outrageous conduct.
The judgment is affirmed.
JUDGE CASEBOLT and JUDGE METZGER concur.
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