A man’s purchase of two beers for his wife at a party the night she was run over by a sheriff’s deputy’s patrol car did not necessarily constitute “guilty participation” in her intoxication that precludes his recovery of damages under the state’s Dram Shop Act, an appeals court has decided.
A 4-1 panel of the Appellate Division, 4th Department, ruled that while the Dram Shop Act prohibits an intoxicated person or their estates from maintaining a cause of action for injuries they sustained from their intoxication, the law allows survivors to sue individually.
