>I think that is what the Dram Shop and Host Liability laws are all about. It has been upheld in the Supreme court in Montana I believe. The Montana Supreme Court held a bar owner responsible for damages caused by a customer because he kept serving him alcohol even though he knew he was already intoxicated. The award was $750,000 in damages against the owner of the Town Tavern in Great Falls, MT.

There have been much larger judgements for this. Here's one against the police (he should have known better - no good deed goes unpunished).

From overlawyered.com

Drunk driver: cops should have stopped me earlier

Chutzpah champion of the Northwest? "Three years after getting drunk, blowing through a stop sign and triggering a wreck that left her passenger critically injured, a former Idaho resident has filed a $1.5 million claim against Washington's Pend Oreille County for not detaining her before she caused the crash." Ashlen Lee, 17 at the time of the accident, says in her claim that a county sheriff's deputy let her off with a warning in the wee hours although he could see she'd been drinking and neither she nor her passenger was wearing a seat belt. (Richard Roesler, "Driver says her accident deputy's fault", Spokane Spokesman-Review, Aug. 5).