In a unanimous opinion, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the plain language of Missouri's “dram shop law” (RSMo § 537.053) provided only one exception to the common law rule that “furnishing alcoholic beverages is not the proximate cause of injuries inflicted by intoxicated persons[,]” namely, “that a cause of action exists only against a person licensed to sell intoxicating liquor by the drink for consumption on the premises.” The Court stated, “No allowance is made for claims against a seller of packaged liquor, even if the sale is to a minor.”

Elois Snodgras, the mother of a young man who died in a single-car drunk driving accident filed a wrongful death action against the convenience store that sold a 12-pack of beer to her son, citing dram shop law. Noonan & Wiseman represented the convenience store and successfully moved to dismiss the lawsuit, pending in the City of St. Louis Circuit Court, on the ground that the dram shop law authorized personal injury lawsuits against sellers of alcohol by the drink for consumption on the premises -- to wit, bars and restaurants -- but not against sellers of pre-packaged alcohol, such as the convenience store named in Snodgras’ suit.

Snodgras challenged the constitutionality of the dram shop law’s limitation of lawsuits to bars and restaurants, arguing that law violated the Missouri Constitution’s guarantees of open access to the courts and to equal protection under the law. According to Snodgras, there was no rational reason to disallow her lawsuit simply because the defendant sold packaged alcohol rather than alcohol by the drink for consumption on the premises, in that the sale of alcohol to her minor son was illegal under either scenario.

The dram shop law had been revised following the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision in Kilmer v. Mun, handed down in 2000. At the time, the dram shop law allowed causes of action only if the liquor seller had previously been convicted or received a suspended imposition of sentence for serving an intoxicated person. The Court held that the law’s requirement of a previous conviction violated the Missouri Constitution’s open courts clause.

Lawmakers revised the dram shop law in 2002 and specifically made the statute applicable only to those who sold liquor by the drink.

In defending the constitutionality of the revised dram shop law, we argued that the Missouri legislature never intended the law to include sellers of packaged alcohol, as such establishments lack the same ability and opportunity to observe and evaluate the intoxication of their customers that bars and restaurants have. We further argued that carving out the exception sought by Snodgras – i.e., for sales of alcohol to minors -- would effectively rewrite the statute and eliminate any kind of restrictions on dram shop liability, thereby betraying the legislature’s intent in passing the law.

As the case concerned a constitutional challenge to a state statute, the Missouri Supreme Court was obligated to assume jurisdiction over the case. The Court agreed with our arguments and affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of Snodgras’ wrongful death action, holding that legislature had a rational basis for what it chose to put in the statute.

“In Missouri, the legislature has chosen to address the problem of underage drinking by imposing penalties on the underage drinker and not by exposing the sellers of package liquor to civil liability. Although reasonable people may disagree about the efficacy of the regulations adopted by the legislature, such disagreement does not establish an equal protection violation.”