Harry A. Sieben, Jr. Press

Drunken Wild fan's wife sues

Published: December 21, 2003
Edition: METRO
Section: NEWS
Page#: 1B

By Curt Brown
Staff Writer

Kris Lodahl drank so much at a Minnesota Wild hockey game two years ago that his blood-alcohol level was 0.27 percent, or nearly triple the legal limit for driving.

Guards at the Xcel Energy Center tossed him out of the arena, and on his way home to Woodbury the 37-year-old sheet-metal worker flipped his SUV on a freeway exit ramp. He was seriously injured and remains partly paralyzed. Now his wife, Rebecca Lodahl, has sued the arena's concessionaires, management and team owners, seeking more than $50,000 in damages.

The case is the latest to use Minnesota's strict dram-shop law, which allows innocent third parties to collect damages from liquor retailers if it can be proved that alcohol was sold to an obviously intoxicated person.

Dram-shop suits are common, but experts say this case poses some unusual issues.
- Unlike the corner tavern where the bartender can easily observe and cut off a customer who is drinking too much, can a sports arena that has so many different vendors and concession booths really be expected to monitor the behavior of thousands of fans who can move around the arena?

- With so many arena vending operations now staffed by volunteers raising money for schools and nonprofit groups, are they qualified and capable to identify an obviously drunk customer?

- Does expelling a drunken customer protect arena and team officials from damages or amount to an admission that they allowed someone to drink too much and get behind the wheel?

- If a fan's own behavior would prevent his filing suit, should his spouse be able to collect damages that would benefit the fan indirectly?

Liquor dealers angry

Rebecca Lodahl's suit names the concessionaires, the Wild owners and the arena management company, because they all share profits from the arena's liquor license. The city of St. Paul, which owns the arena and leases it to the team, is not named, so limits on damages that can be collected from governments don't apply.

Both the concessionaire, Centerplate, and Wild officials have declined to comment while the case is pending in Ramsey County District Court.

But the director of the state bar owners association said the case has angered many of the state's 6,500 liquor-license holders, who are required to pay skyrocketing insurance premiums as a result of jury awards and out-of-court settlements of dram-shop suits.

"I think this case is going to be a catalyst for change because there is a huge crisis out there with insurance companies gouging bar owners and trial lawyers using the dram-shop law as a license to steal," said Jim Farrell, executive director of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association and a former state legislator from St. Paul.

"In a case where someone is on a mission to get drunk, it's hard to prevent him at a venue where he can get one or two drinks from one concession stand staffed by school fundraisers and then have a vendor pass a few more down the row," Farrell said. Court records show that Kris Lodahl had been convicted at least twice of drunken driving in the 1990s before the Feb. 8, 2002, accident that sparked the suit.

Point of law

Attorney Harry Sieben, who is representing Rebecca Lodahl, said the law is clear that any negligence on Kris Lodahl's part does not apply to his wife. He said that just because the Xcel Energy Center seats 19,000 people, the law doesn't view it differently from Joe's Corner Bar.

"Minnesota public policy encourages those who sell alcohol to be careful and not serve obviously intoxicated persons," Sieben said. "If they have to pay the consequences occasionally, it will make them more careful."

Mike Steenson, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said Rebecca Lodahl could make a substantial claim by demonstrating how her standard of living has been lowered by the accident, even though her husband was completely to blame. "He could be 100 percent at fault and she can still recover quite significantly," Steenson said."They [the defendants] would have been better off had they called him a cab."

As lawyers for both sides interview witnesses, the case could hinge on whether Kris Lodahl was buying his own drinks or having someone else make the purchase. "If a table buys a round at a tavern, it poses a challenge for the waitress to know for certain what each person's level of inebriation is," said Minneapolis attorney Will Fluegel, a certified civil trial specialist.

Trial unlikely

Even if a judge decides the case has merit, it still may never get to trial. Sieben said he tells his clients that there is a 90 percent chance such cases will settle before trial. Farrell said both sides are usually afraid to let a jury decide. Although dram-shop suits are far from novel, there have been surprisingly few such cases involving Minnesota professional teams. Bill Lester, executive director of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which runs the Metrodome, said that he can only recall a half-dozen cases in the Dome's 21 years and that he doesn't think there have been any large jury awards. Target Center officials couldn't recall any similar suits.

In October, the family of a 2-year-old girl sued the National Football League and the New York Giants after she was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1999 accident. A fan leaving the game slammed into the family's vehicle after they had been on a pumpkin-picking trip. The suit alleges that the fan drank 14 beers and that the NFL's relationship with brewers promotes that kind of behavior.

In Minnesota, the city of Stacy was ordered to pay $410,000 in damages in the early 1990s when a woman had been drinking at a municipal bar with her ex-husband and wound up running over him a few miles away. The injury award was three times the city's annual budget. Wisconsin, which has many breweries, has no dram-shop law.

Curt Brown is at curt.brown@startribune.com.

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