‘Tis The Season: A Refresher On Social Host Liability

The leading case on social host liability is Childs v Desormeaux1, where the Supreme Court of Canada considered a tragic case involving an impaired driver and a motor vehicle collision which left one person dead and another paralyzed. The Plaintiffs claimed that the hosts of a party at which the impaired driver was a guest owed them a duty of care and had failed to stop Mr. Desormeaux from driving while intoxicated.

The Supreme Court decided the case on the issues of proximity and foreseeability, and ultimately found that the social hosts did not owe a duty of care to the Plaintiffs on the facts of that case.

In particular, foresee-ability had not been established as there had been no finding of fact that the social hosts knew or ought to have known that their guest was too drunk to drive. With respect to proximity, the Supreme Court found that simply holding a house party where alcohol is served is not an invitation to participate in highly risky activity; more is required to establish a risk that requires positive action.2

Despite its ultimate conclusion in Childs, the Supreme Court did not foreclose the possibility of a duty of care arising in a social host context with different facts, writing: "...it might be argued that a host who continues to serve alcohol to a visibly inebriated person knowing that he or she will be driving home has become implicated in the creation or enhancement of a risk sufficient to give rise to a prima facie duty of care to third parties”.3

The Court of Appeal for Ontario more recently considered the issue of social host liability in the case of Williams v Richard.4

Here, the case involved two men, Mr. Richard and Mr. Williams, who had formed a pattern of consuming large quantities of alcohol together after work. On the occasion in question, shortly after leaving Mr. Richard's mother's home where he had consumed approximately 15 beers over the course of 3 hours, Mr. Williams loaded his children into his car and drove their babysitter home. On the way back to his residence, Mr. Williams was involved in a serious accident in which he died and his children were injured. Mr. Williams' spouse and injured children commenced an action against, inter alia, Mr. Richard and his mother on the basis of social host liability.

The Plaintiffs appealed a motion judge's decision to grant the defendants summary judgement to dismiss their claims. The Court of Appeal ultimately decided in the Plaintiffs' favour, and overturned...