Can a vendor escape liability by claiming that the nature of their establishment was such that monitoring consumption is impossible?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Donaldson v. John Doe et al, 2007 BCSC 557 (CanLII):
In Stewart v. Pettie, Major J. stated that commercial vendors cannot escape liability by arguing that the nature of their establishment was such that monitoring consumption is impossible. At para. 56 he said: I agree that establishments which serve alcohol must either intervene in appropriate circumstances or risk liability, and that this liability cannot be avoided where the establishment has intentionally structured the environment in such a way as to make it impossible to know whether intervention is necessary . . . In such circumstances it would not be open to the establishment to claim that they could not foresee the risk created when the inability to foresee the risk was the direct result of the way the serving environment was structured.
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