Articles Posted in Dram Shop Cases

The death of a highway worker in Canby last week turns a spotlight both on the dangers roadside workers ensure and, once again, on the problem of Oregon drunk driving.

According to The Oregonian, a 48-year-old man who was “placing warning signs about road construction near South New Era Road near South Haines Road” died last week after he was hit by a car believed to have been driven by a drunk driver. The paper reports that the driver was taken into police custody and an investigation is under way.

This incident is a sad reminder of the importance of exercising caution around highway workers. All too often, too many drivers fail to heed warnings to slow down in construction zones or other places where road workers are present. Many drivers also fail to give roadside workers a sufficiently wide berth when passing them.

With the holidays now behind us this is a good moment to pause to examine the Oregon drunk driving and Washington drunk driving statistics reported over the Christmas and New Year’s weekends. DUII/DUI crash and arrest numbers are always a sad reminder of the importance of not overindulging when one goes out to celebrate, and of the crucial role our courts play in ensuring personal accountability.

According to radio station KBND, the Oregon State Police reported “one death and 28 DUII arrests on Oregon’s roads and highways.” The comparable figures for the New Year’s period on Oregon roads were 53 arrests and two crashes resulting in three fatalities, according to a report published in The Oregonian. To our north, in Washington, troopers “arrested 161 drivers suspected of being impaired by drugs or alcohol during the Christmas holiday weekend,” according to the Tri-City Herald.

In both states the Christmas figures represent notable decreases compared with the comparable period a year earlier. The Oregon New Year’s figures, however, were up by approximately 25% over the previous year and show a 55% increase compared to two years ago.

A 29-year-old Oregon City woman died recently as a result of a two-car Oregon drunk driving accident, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The crash occurred just before 2 am on state route 213 in Oregon City, the newspaper reports, quoting a spokesperson with the Oregon State Police Portland Command. “Police said Jennifer Miller, 29, of Oregon City, drove eastbound on the highway and ran a red light, crashing into a southbound Dodge pickup… Miller was declared dead at the scene, police said,” according to the newspaper. A passenger traveling in her car suffered injuries the paper describes as “serious.”

The pick-up truck’s driver was not injured in the Portland-area car crash, and was reported to be cooperating with police. Though The Oregonian’s report on the crash does not seek to assign blame, it does note that the pickup’s driver “had a green signal at the time of the crash.”

A civil suit filed earlier this month here in Portland is an excellent illustration of Oregon dram shop law and the ways it seeks to protect the public at large and accident victims in particular. According to The Oregonian, the husband of a woman who died in a Portland drunk driving accident last February is suing not only the alleged drunk driver but also two bars which, he claims, served the driver “while he was visibly intoxicated.”

The newspaper goes on to add that “the complaint accuses the bars of negligence for allowing him to drive, failing to determine whether he planned to drive and failing to alert authorities.”

This is practically the definition of a claim under the Oregon dram shop law – a statute that says a bar or alcohol retailer can be held legally responsibly for the damage done by a patron who clearly should not have been served in the first place.

Chalk one up for Orange County, California in the quest for innovative ways to combat drunk driving. According to a recent article in the Orange County Register a recent student assembly in the San Clemente High School gym featured “an actual court session and sentencing of a DUI defendant.”

The paper reports that the County Superior Court session was moved to the school for part of one day as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of drunk driving and its consequences. Placing the session in the school allows anti-drunk driving activists to demonstrate this directly to teens – a group who have traditionally both been at extremely high risk for drunk driving injuries and fatalities while also being unusually difficult to reach in effective ways.

A session later in the day at the same school featured “an Orange County deputy district attorney (discussing) family consequences from a teen DUI or DUI-related crash.”