Page:Shannon v. Wilson.pdf/1

Rh Martan Dale SHANNON, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Charles Shannon, Deceased v. L.K. WILSON and Elizabeth Ashworth, Individually and as Partners of City Liquor, a Partnership

96-762

Supreme Court of Arkansas Opinion delivered June 23, 1997


 * 1) C.—When a judicially created rule becomes outmoded or unjust in its application, it is appropriate for the judiciary to modify it; the field of common law is the primary concern of the supreme court; accordingly, the court, not the legislature, should extirpate those rules of decision that are admittedly unjust, for it is to the judiciary that the power of government is given to provide protection against individual hurt; thus, as a part of the state's common-law doctrine, the supreme court has a duty to change the common law when it is no longer reflective of the economic and social needs of society.
 * 2) I.—Under the existing common-law rule, no cause of action exists against one selling liquor because the drinking of liquor, not the remote sale of it, is considered to be the proximate cause of any injury; this strict nonliability rule keeps the issue of a vendor's illegal sale of alcohol to a minor from a jury and takes away the basic jury function of determining proximate cause; while questions of foreseeability and causation may be ones of fact, proximate causation is usually a question for the jury; like any other question of proximate causation, the question whether an act or condition is an intervening or concurrent cause is usually a question for the jury.
 * 3) N.—Implicit in the common-law rule is that proximate cause must be the immediate cause; the supreme court, however, has held that proximate cause is the efficient and responsible cause but that it need not be the last or nearest