Are parents responsible for kids' drinking? Maryland court says yes.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that adults can be held civilly responsible if they serve alcohol to a teen who gets hurt or hurts someone else.

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor/File
Maryland's highest court ruled that adults who provide alcohol to minors can be held civilly responsible for the decisions made by those teenagers. The Maryland State House, seen here in May 2013, passed a bill in March to allow sentences up to one year for adults who serve alcohol to children or teens.

Maryland parents who provide alcohol to underage children can be held responsible if the underage drinker then is injured or hurts others, Maryland's highest court ruled Tuesday.

The decision differs from previous decisions Maryland's Court of Appeals had made regarding third-party responsibility for the actions of intoxicated individuals. Previous rulings had found that bar owners weren't responsible for the behavior of their drunk customers, but the new ruling stated that teenagers are unable to fully understand the consequences of their decisions, as the Baltimore Sun reported. 

"Underage persons are not solely responsible for drinking alcohol on an adult's property because they are not competent to handle the effects of this potentially dangerous substance," Judge Sally D. Adkins wrote in the court's decision.

In order to be held responsible, the adult must "knowingly" and "willfully" provide alcohol to an underage person, The Washington Post reported. 

The decision related to two recent cases in the state. In one of the cases, a woman was walking her dog in 2011 when she was hit by a car driven by an 18-year-old who had been drinking at a party where an adult had been mixing drinks. 

In the other case, 17-year old Steven Dankos had gotten drunk in the garage of Linda Stapf's house before getting into the bed of a truck. The truck crashed, killing Steven. Ms. Stapf was believed to have provided the alcohol for the party. 

"This is a wake-up call to the so-called cool parents who on Friday nights have their kids’ friends over and allow them to drink in their basements," Tim Maloney, the lawyer for Steven's mother, told the Post. 

The decision comes after the state's General Assembly increased fines and jail times for adults who knowingly host parties where underage drinking takes place. The legislation was originally known as “Alex and Calvin’s Bill,” for two teens killed in June 2015 by a classmate who got drunk at a party where a parent was present. 

Despite some parents' rationale that it is safe to allow teens to drink at home where they can keep an eye on them, the only safe approach for underage people is abstaining from alcohol, said Lisa Spicknall, director of the Maryland branch of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 

"Reality shows that children die each and every day in impaired driving crashes caused by underage drinkers leaving parties that are hosted by parents," she said.

The appeals court decided the "knowingly and willfully" wording of the criminal law against hosting underage drinkers should apply in civil cases as well as criminal ones, as parents whose children host a party when they aren't home or sneak alcohol into the house will likely not be held legally responsible. 

Mr. Maloney said he believed the rulings would have a long-term impact. 

"This has become almost an epidemic in some areas of the state," Maloney told the Sun. "I think this is really going to change the social consciousness of parents throughout the state."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Are parents responsible for kids' drinking? Maryland court says yes.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0706/Are-parents-responsible-for-kids-drinking-Maryland-court-says-yes.
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe