The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that parents who allow their underage children to host drinking parties cannot be held liable if guests get into drunken driving accidents.
My, how times have changed.
I was never popular in high school. I played baseball, but wasn't affluent enough to be in the "popular" clique. I never drank in high school, either, except when my grandpa would slip me a few sips of Pabst Blue Ribbon as we sat where the driveway entered the garage on warm summer days.
I heard about drinking parties from another baseball player, a childhood friend, who was popular. He said the group had to sneak around so as not to alert the parents to what was going on.
He said he never saw a parent provide alcohol at a party, and never did he hear a friend brag, "My parents said we could drink as much as we want."
Drinking en masse was foreign to me until I got to college. There, you were allowed to drink on campus as long as you did so responsibly. It was a common sight to see 18-year-old freshmen enjoying a six-pack in the quad, even talking it up with one of the college campus security guards while taking a swig of Milwaukee's Best.
This still goes on at that college, and is it legal for students to be drinking on campus when they're not 21? No. Is it understandable, because these teenagers are responsible enough to be living on their own, away from home? Yes.
For more than five years after college graduation, I covered high school sports. Rarely did I hear an athlete talk about a drinking party, but fans, that was another story.
I picked up quite a few cell phone conversations centered around what happened the previous weekend when someone was drunk, or what drinking party was broken up by police, sending teens scurrying into the darkness faster than cockroaches when you turn on the light.
It wasn't like that when I was in high school, at least I don't think so. There was a little more respect for alcohol and what it could do to the body, and the brain.
Some teens today drink more before high school graduation than I have in the 11 years I've been drinking. It's a safe bet to say more high school students are drinking today than when I was in school. Attitudes toward drinking have changed, for the worse.
The State Supreme Court ruling was in favor of two Columbia County parents who allegedly knew high school students were drinking on their property.
One student who was under the influence later hit a vehicle carrying a family, injuring four people. The family sued the driver and her auto insurance company, along with the party's hosts and their homeowners insurance policy.
Justice Patrick Crooks noted the parents did not provide the alcohol and did not know the student was drunk when she left in her car. If the parents allegedly knew drinking was going on on their property, would they think there was a chance some student would leave the party drunk?
Crooks doesn't think so.
"The (parents) could not reasonably have foreseen that an underage guest who they were not specifically aware was intoxicated, and who arrived under the premises under their control with alcohol purchased elsewhere, would cause foreseeable harm to others."
They didn't know that, but they had to have known it could happen. Sounds like a cop-out.
- Jim Winter is the news editor of The Monroe Times. He can be reached at newseditor@themonroetimes.com.
My, how times have changed.
I was never popular in high school. I played baseball, but wasn't affluent enough to be in the "popular" clique. I never drank in high school, either, except when my grandpa would slip me a few sips of Pabst Blue Ribbon as we sat where the driveway entered the garage on warm summer days.
I heard about drinking parties from another baseball player, a childhood friend, who was popular. He said the group had to sneak around so as not to alert the parents to what was going on.
He said he never saw a parent provide alcohol at a party, and never did he hear a friend brag, "My parents said we could drink as much as we want."
Drinking en masse was foreign to me until I got to college. There, you were allowed to drink on campus as long as you did so responsibly. It was a common sight to see 18-year-old freshmen enjoying a six-pack in the quad, even talking it up with one of the college campus security guards while taking a swig of Milwaukee's Best.
This still goes on at that college, and is it legal for students to be drinking on campus when they're not 21? No. Is it understandable, because these teenagers are responsible enough to be living on their own, away from home? Yes.
For more than five years after college graduation, I covered high school sports. Rarely did I hear an athlete talk about a drinking party, but fans, that was another story.
I picked up quite a few cell phone conversations centered around what happened the previous weekend when someone was drunk, or what drinking party was broken up by police, sending teens scurrying into the darkness faster than cockroaches when you turn on the light.
It wasn't like that when I was in high school, at least I don't think so. There was a little more respect for alcohol and what it could do to the body, and the brain.
Some teens today drink more before high school graduation than I have in the 11 years I've been drinking. It's a safe bet to say more high school students are drinking today than when I was in school. Attitudes toward drinking have changed, for the worse.
The State Supreme Court ruling was in favor of two Columbia County parents who allegedly knew high school students were drinking on their property.
One student who was under the influence later hit a vehicle carrying a family, injuring four people. The family sued the driver and her auto insurance company, along with the party's hosts and their homeowners insurance policy.
Justice Patrick Crooks noted the parents did not provide the alcohol and did not know the student was drunk when she left in her car. If the parents allegedly knew drinking was going on on their property, would they think there was a chance some student would leave the party drunk?
Crooks doesn't think so.
"The (parents) could not reasonably have foreseen that an underage guest who they were not specifically aware was intoxicated, and who arrived under the premises under their control with alcohol purchased elsewhere, would cause foreseeable harm to others."
They didn't know that, but they had to have known it could happen. Sounds like a cop-out.
- Jim Winter is the news editor of The Monroe Times. He can be reached at newseditor@themonroetimes.com.
