Childs V. Desormeaux's Argument

On the eve of January 1st, 1999, a horrific incident took place that changed the lives of innocent strangers who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Desmond Desormeaux attended a New Year’s party hosted by his friends, Julie Zimmer and Dwight Courier who chose to celebrate the joyous New Year. The actions he took at this party lead to the loss of an innocent third-party victim and a lawsuit that is now known as Childs v Desormeaux. The victims of the incident lobbied an appeal in order to prove that, under the circumstances, the duty of care was established between the hosts and the driver forcing liability against the host as well. The verdict of this case may prove to be an important precedent against the generally unestablished area of social host liability in Canada but also given the court’s reasoning this may prove to be the economically efficient choice. The choices he made at this party of his own volition proved to be the underlying cause for the transpiring events.
In order to christen the New Year, Julie Zimmer and Dwight Courier hosted a house party for which they designated the supply of alcohol to be BYOB (Bring Your Own Alcohol). They invited Desmond Desormeaux to the party and after the celebrations and a glass of champagne provided by the hosts he chose to leave the party at around 1:30 am by at this point was severely intoxicated. Before he got into his …show more content…
This was done using Cooper v Hobart trial as a general framework as social host liability has not been fully explored within Canadian realms yet. Along with differentiating between commercial and social hosts liabilities the verdict was also predicated on the case failing the Anns Test, used for determining whether or not the duty of care was

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