 So-called "cool parents" who knowingly let teens host boozy parties at their homes now run the risk of being sued if an underage drinker gets hurt or hurts someone else, Maryland's highest court ruled Tuesday. "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. While some parents might think they are keeping teens safer by letting them drink at home where adults can keep an eye on things, Lisa Spicknall, director of the Maryland branch of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the group believes alcohol abstinence for underage people is the only safe approach. "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. v. Linda Stapf, the court said that Dankos’s 17-year-old son got drunk in the garage of Stapf’s Howard County home in 2009 and got in the bed of a pickup truck with an intoxicated partygoer at the wheel. 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. Dankos sued Stapf, saying she was responsible for the death for allowing the teen to get so intoxicated he couldn’t make a smart decision getting in the truck. According to court documents, Stapf's house was known among students at River Hill High School as a "party house" and teens went there to drink almost every weekend. "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." The other case, from Baltimore County, was brought by Manal Kiriakos, a woman who was out walking her dogs when she was hit by an 18-year-old who had been drinking at the home of a man he worked with. The Court of Appeals rulings are not the final verdict in the two cases. 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.
– In what one attorney calls a "wake-up call to the so-called cool parents," Maryland adults who provide alcohol to underage kids can be held legally responsible if those kids harm themselves or others, the Washington Post reports. According to the Baltimore Sun, adults in Maryland could already be criminally charged with providing alcohol to minors, but Tuesday's ruling from the state's Court of Appeals adds—in the words of another lawyer—"one more disincentive" to parents thinking about letting their kids and their kids' friends drink at their home. “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," the Christian Science Monitor quotes the court's decision as saying. The ruling stems from two recent cases. In one, an 18-year-old driver hit a woman walking her dog after drinking at a party where an adult was tending bar. In another, a 17-year-old got into a fatal crash after drinking alcohol believed to have been provided by an adult. A MADD executive director praised Tuesday's ruling, saying it's a myth that underage drinking with a parent's supervision is safe; the only safety comes from not letting kids drink at all. In order for an adult to be held legally responsible, they must have "knowingly" and "willfully" provided alcohol to people who are under 21. More than 30 other states have similar laws on the books.