>>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.
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>There have been much larger judgements for this. Here's one against the police (he should have known better - no good deed goes unpunished).
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>From overlawyered.com
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>Drunk driver: cops should have stopped me earlier
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>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).

People like that really tick me off. At the same time, that deputy endangered innocent people by letting a drunk driver continue to drive drunk. What the hell was he thinking? I think the judge should throw the case out of court, and I think the passenger (or his/her parents if the passenger is dead) should refile a similar suit naming both the driver and the deputy (the county).