Injury & Death from Alcohol Poisoning
A civil court judge has thrown out a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of a teenager who died of alcohol poisoning at a friend's home. The judge ruled that there was no legal basis upon which the parents could prevail at trial in their lawsuit against the other home owners. As Orlando injury lawyers, we would expect the grieving parents to appeal the judge’s ruling.
The case involves the issue of whether there was a duty and failure to provide care to a sick person. According to the parents of the deceased girl, if the death involved anything other than alcohol, the judge would not have dismissed the lawsuit.
Specifically, this tragedy involved a 17-year-old high school junior who died after a night drinking with her friends at her classmate’s home. The Sheriff's Office investigators said the teens had been drinking heavily while the parents slept upstairs. It appears that the court’s decision relied heavily on the undisputed fact that the parents/home owners did not authorize the drinking by the teenagers.
The deceased girl’s parents unsuccessfully argued that the parents should not have maintained an open bar and should have checked on their daughter. Sadly, their daughter became unconscious from drinking 15 shots of vodka and was later found lying on the floor of a bathroom.
The decision comports with the law of many states which provide that social hosts who furnish alcoholic beverages to a person may not be legally accountable for damages suffered by that person resulting from the consumption of those beverages. To parents this decision and these circumstances provide a dramatic reminder that our children need to be educated about the dangers of drinking and alcohol poisoning.
