Court ruling helps store owners

BOISE – The state Supreme Court has provided a possible defense to operators of two north-central Idaho convenience stores sued for selling alcohol to a motorist who ended up killing himself and three others in a head-on collision.

The court ruled that under Idaho’s Dram Shop Act, the person who provided the alcohol can claim that the motorist was at least equally responsible for the deaths under the state’s comparative negligence principles.

“It has long been the law in Idaho that there can be more than one proximate cause of an injury,” Justice Daniel Eismann wrote for the unanimous court.

The decision sends the damage suit back to the 2nd District Court where a determination will have to be made on the comparative responsibility of the driver and the store owners for the deaths.

The case stemmed from the June 1998 collision on U.S. Highway 12 between Lewiston and Orofino of a pickup truck driven by Charles Bogar, 27, and a sport utility vehicle carrying five employees of the state Department of Labor.

Bogar and his passenger, Darrell Lee Miller, 25, were killed while the driver of the sport utility vehicle, Arthur Rowe, 59, and one of his passengers, Jessica Pippenger, 34, also died.