Adults Under 21 Years of Age Are Liable for Their Drunk Guests

It is common knowledge that when adults serve alcohol to guests of their home, they have a responsibility to take care of them. This responsibility grounded in what is known as “social host liability.” One of the most dangerous situations involving social host liability occurs when a guest becomes intoxicated and gets into a motor vehicle accident upon leaving the host’s home.

Over the years, New Jersey has gone to great lengths to pass legislation construe the law so as to provide remedies for persons who become injured as result of drunk driving accidents. For example, in 1984, the New Jersey Supreme Court, in Kelly v. Gwinnell, 476 A.2d 1219, 1223-1224 (N.J. 1984), imposed liability on adults who serve liquor to their social guests at their residence, “knowing both that the guest is intoxicated and will thereafter be operating a motor vehicle.” The court held that these adults are “liable for injuries inflicted on a third party as a result of the negligent operation of a motor vehicle by the adult guest when such negligence is caused by the intoxication.”

What, then, does that mean for “underage adults,” or adults who are over the age of 18 but younger than the legal drinking age of 21? Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court, in Estate of Narleski v. Gomes, 237 A.3d 933 (N.J. 2020), continued the trend of providing injured third parties from drunk driving accidents with more causes of action against social hosts by expanding this liability to underage adults.

In Estate of Narleski, Mark Zwierzynski, an underage adult, invited his underage, adult friends to his home where they consumed alcohol they had purchased. Though Zwierzynski’s parents were the owners of the residence, neither was home. At some point that evening, two of the underage adults, Nicholas Gomes and Brandon Tyler Narleski, left the residence while intoxicated to drive to another friend’s house. On the way, they were involved in a motor vehicle accident that resulted in Narleski’s death. Narleski’s parents filed a wrongful death action with the New Jersey Superior Court, Law Division. As part of the lawsuit, Zwierzynski and his parents were added as third-party defendants for their role as social hosts on the night of the accident.

At first, the court granted summary judgment, which was affirmed by the Appellate Division, to Zwierzynski and his parents. The courts had found that Zwierzynski’s parents had no duty to “supervise the conduct” of Zwierzynski, who was over the age of 18. The courts also held that Zwierzynski did not “own, lease, or manage the property” where his friends had consumed alcohol, so he did not have a “duty to supervise his adult friends during their consumption.”

The case was appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where the lower court decisions were reversed. In reaching its decision, the Supreme Court relied heavily upon public policy, statistics for drunk driving accidents, and considerations of prior case law and statutory law. The court provided the following bright line rule:

A plaintiff that becomes injured by an intoxicated underage social guest may succeed in a cause of action against an underage social host if the plaintiff can prove:

1. The social host knowingly permitted and facilitated the consumption of alcoholic beverages to underage guests in a residence under his control (including control by apparent authority);
2. The social host knowingly provided alcohol to a visibly intoxicated underage guest or knowingly permitted the visibly intoxicated underage guest to serve himself of be served by others;
3. The social host knew or reasonably should have known that the visibly intoxicated social guest would leave the premises and operate a motor vehicle and therefore would foreseeably endanger the lives and property of others;
4. The social host did not take any reasonable steps to prevent the intoxicated guest from getting behind the wheel of the vehicle; and
5. The social guest, as a result of the intoxication facilitated by the social host, negligently operated a vehicle and proximately caused injury to a third party.

Estate of Narleski, 237 A.3d at 949-950.

This roadmap gives future plaintiffs with specific criteria that must be satisfied in order to succeed in causes of action against underage adults. The expanded duty arises where an underage adult may have apparent authority to allow underage guests into a residence owned by adult family members. The court also noted that it is not a defense that the underage guests bought and brought alcoholic beverages that they or others consumed.

New Jersey homeowners should be mindful of the court’s decision to expand the reach of social host liability to include underage adults. Homeowners should expect the New Jersey legislature to continue to pass legislation further expanding social host liability and that future court decisions will follow suit, as long as the statistics continue to show that drunk driving is one of the leading causes of serious injuries and deaths on New Jersey roadways.

*Andrew is an associate in our Mount Laurel, New Jersey office. He can be reached at (856) 779-6114 or ajvallejo@mdwcg.com.

_{Defense Digest, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2021 is prepared by Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin to provide information on recent legal developments of interest to our readers. This publication is not intended to provide legal advice for a specific situation or to create an attorney-client relationship. ATTORNEY ADVERTISING pursuant to New York RPC 7.1. © 2021 Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin. All Rights Reserved. This article may not be reprinted without the express written permission of our firm. For reprints, contact tamontemuro@mdwcg.com.}