COLUMBUS — An appeals court has upheld a decision by a Hocking County judge to dismiss a lawsuit against a local carryout, for selling alcohol to two underaged men who later died in a car crash.
In August 2021 the estates of Kyle M. Stuller of Logan and Cody E. Anderson of McArthur filed the complaint in Hocking County Common Pleas Court against Harper’s Gas & More, located on state Route 664 in South Bloomingville, and one of its employees.
In January 2020 Stuller, 19, and Anderson, 20, had been killed in a single-vehicle crash on County Road 18 (Goosecreek Road) in Vinton County’s Jackson Township. Stuller was driving, traveling south on County Road 18, when the vehicle went off the right side of the roadway, striking a guardrail and a tree, then continuing into Salt Creek. Both he and Anderson were killed in the crash.
According to the lawsuit, earlier that night Anderson had bought four 23.5-oz cans of a type of beer containing 14% alcohol by volume, which the two young men drank, allegedly becoming intoxicated.
The lawsuit claimed a Harper’s employee had made no effort to obtain identification from Anderson to confirm he was old enough to buy alcohol. It also alleged that the employee had never gotten any training from her employer about the legal obligations of a permit holder licensed to sell alcohol in Ohio. The plaintiffs sought a judgment of at least $25,000, plus punitive damages.
In January 2023 Judge Jason Despetorich dismissed the suit, based on a fine point of Ohio law. In Ohio, a state statute known as the Dram Shop Act provides the only basis for suing a liquor permit holder for injuries or death that are caused by sale of liquor to a third person. But that law specifies that the alcohol seller is liable only if the person who bought the alcohol is the same person who caused the harm.
In this case, Anderson bought the beer and Stuller was the driver in the crash, meaning that neither man had a viable claim against the seller of the alcohol under the Dram Shop Act.
The plaintiffs appealed Despetorich’s ruling to Ohio’s Fourth District Court of Appeals. In their appeal, they argued that in making his decision to dismiss, Despetorich had improperly taken into account information that had not been provided to him in the documents filed with the court — specifically, the fact that Stuller was the driver in the crash.
Since neither the original lawsuit, nor the defendant’s answer to it, mention who was driving during the crash, the plaintiffs maintained, the judge clearly must have gotten this information from somewhere other than the court pleadings — meaning he should not have taken it into account in making his decision to dismiss.
In its ruling on the case, the Fourth District Court observes that the plaintiffs were aware of this issue early enough that they could have raised it in the trial court, but did not — and thus gave up any chance to appeal on this basis except a claim of “plain error.”
However, the appellate court notes, case law has established that a claim of plain error is appropriate only in “extremely rare” cases in which an error not objected to at the trial court level is so great that it “seriously affects the basic fairness, integrity, or public reputation of the judicial process.”
This case does not meet that criterion, the court found, so it affirmed the trial court’s decision.
Email at jphillips@logandaily.com
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