daughter injured

[douglasdonaghey]

On September 29th,1999, my daughter and 2 of her friends visited the home of one of their friends.While at the residence, they recieved alcohol from their friend. My daughter and her friends preceded to get drunk. Later that night, when she came home, my daughter passed out on our bathroom floor. The fall she took was so hard that she fractured her back. Due to the fracture, two disks in her back bulged out of place.

We have spent more money than we can afford bringing her to doctors all over the state, buying back braces, paying for the numerous medications she is taking, among many others things. We do not have insurance. We have had to pay all medical bills ourselves.

We have tried to press charges, but were told that since all of the children are minors, nothing can be done because there is no law against one minor providing alcohol to other minors. However, the girl who provided the alcohol, her father was home at the time. He never left while my daughter and her friends were there. He even entered the room where they were drinking. The kids left the house, all carrying cans of beer and glasses with Vodka in it. The girls father watched them leave. At one point he was less than 10 feet away from them. Now, he is claiming that he had no idea what they were doing and was not aware they were drinking alcohol.

We are considering a civil suit. The only question is , can we do this considering the fact the father is claiming ignorance? What are our rights, and the rights of our daughter?

Please help, anyone.

ps-We live in the state of Louisiana

 

[lawrat]

I am a law school graduate currently awaiting Bar results. What I offer to you is mere information, not to be construed as forming an attorney-client relationship.

1. usually, when a "tort" -- here providing alcohol illegally to another minor--is committed by a child, then the parents are not responsible. So here, you can sue the child for your daughter's injuries, but then you have to think whether or not the child has any money, close enough to help you pay the bills. With such a severe injury, the court may be able to attach judgment and make it payable when the minor gets a job (but that is all a waiting game). Also, there are laws that protect minors -- ie getting alcohol, so if a minor is serving it, because the law is essentially to protect a minor, they may not be able to be prosecuted. Also, there are issues of "contributory negligence" and "comparative fault" by your daughter. If you live in a state that abides by contributory negligence, then the fact your daughter willingly took the alcohol can be a complete bar to recovery.

2. If your daughter is still a minor, you can sue the parents on her behalf. Typically, as I said before, parents are not responsible for the intentional acts of their children. However, when the father was present and had knowledge of this behavior (i.e. if he did nothing about it indicates he was watched his children drink or possibly encouraged his children to do so) and he did nothing to stop it, he was aware of negligent tendencies of his children. He had a duty at that point to make sure alcohol was not going to be served or warn the other kids or the parents.


That is pretty much the long and the short of it. I suggest you contact a personal injury attorney at attorneypages.com and see what can be done. Make sure you ask what type of state it is, meaning:

a. Comparative Neg.: recovery usually
b. Contrib. Neg: no recovery unless defendant had "last clear chance" to avoid plaintiff getting injured.

Hope this helps you. At least your child learned a good lesson, a very painful one but a good one nonetheless. Good luck to you.