A Family's Liability- when a family is negligent, does the liability extend down the family chain?
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On July 26th 2009, Diane Schuler loaded her 2 children and three nieces into her car and hit the road, returning home to Long Island after a weekend of camping. This was 9:30 in the morning. By 1:30 in the afternoon, Schuler, her nieces, one of her children, and three men from another vehicle were dead; killed in a head-on collision after Schuler drove for almost two miles the wrong way down the Taconic Parkway. The most recent toxicology reports from Schuler’s autopsy suggest that at the time of her death she had extremely high blood alcohol levels and had recently smoked marijuana. At this time, prosecutors have declined to file criminal charges, saying that “Diane Schuler died in the crash and the charges died with her.”
In the wake of this tragedy, the families of the three men killed are considering filing a variety of civil suits. They have publically, through the media, condemned her and her family members and said the civil suits are the only way to enforce justice is served. This piece is just a brief examination of what sort of wrongful death suits might be filed, and under what legal theories. The following discussion will assume that Ms. Schuler was in fact drunk at the time of the accident.
Most wrongful death suits are filed under a negligence theory, and this matter will probably not be an exception. Simply put, negligence means that the defendant had a duty toward the plaintiffs to take reasonable precautions to avoid causing injury, defendant failed to take those precautions, and the plaintiffs were actually injured as a result. In the current matter, it seems fairly clear that Diane Schuler was negligent. We all know that driving while drunk is dangerous. Reasonable people, therefore avoid doing it. The more interesting question is who can be sued.
If Schuler was negligent, her estate can be sued. Potentially the company insuring the car she was driving can be sued. The car was actually owned by, Warren Hance, Schuler’s brother, so he might potentially have been liable. This last theory is known as the doctrine of negligent entrustment. It means that if the plaintiff can show that Hance knew, or should have known that his sister was drunk, that Hance may have been negligent in allowing her to drive his car. At this time it does not appear that Schuler had begun drinking before she began driving, so this last theory is unlikely to be a winner.
Schuler’s autopsy indicated that she had ingested at least 10 shots of vodka and had high levels of THC, a metabolite of marijuana, in her bloodstream. This sort of binge drinking is often indicative of a long-term substance abuse problem and attorneys for the families of the three men killed have suggested that Schuler’s family must surely have known of any such problem. If this is so, the question becomes, were those family members negligent in allowing Schuler to drive that day, and should the families of those killed be allowed to recover from them?
This is a question that doesn’t appear to have been previously litigated, and ultimately the answer will come down to how far we, as a society, think duty should be extended. We have laws that hold sellers of liquor responsible for harm caused by their customers, but we don’t generally hold social hosts responsible for damage done by their drunken guests.
If Diane Schuler did have a substance abuse problem, which her family denies, how closely related would a family member need to be in order to be held legally responsible for her behavior? Her husband, surely, but who else? Three completely innocent people are dead here, and their families should receive restitution, to the extent that is possible. However, as a society we need to decide just how comfortable we would be if we personally were held responsible for the actions of our families.