Busi 301 Courtroom Observation

The case, White v. Gibbs, is between the plaintiff, Debbie White, and the defendants, Patrick Gibbs and O’Malley’s Tavern. Mrs. White is suing Mr. Gibbs and the O’Malley’s Tavern for allowing Edward Hard to purchase enough alcohol to get intoxicated which then led him to get in his car and chase after Mrs. White and her husband, Bruno White, ultimately crashing into them and killing her husband. The case was brought to the US District Court for the Northern District of Indiana because Mrs. White and Mr. Gibbs do not live in the same states.

Though Mrs. White is in the process of suing Mr. Gibbs and the O’Malley’s Tavern, the goal for this case is to decide whether a motion of Summary Judgment should be taken. According to the Legal Dictionary on Law.com, “Summary Judgment is a court order ruling that no factual issues remain to be tried and therefore a cause of action or all causes of action in a complaint can be decided upon certain facts without trial” (Summary Judgment, n.d.). Meaning that Summary Judgment is a motion by either the plaintiff or the defendant that contends that the facts are either perviously settled or too one-sided to be tried in court. In this case the defendants are calling for Summary Judgment. The Plaintiff does not want the motion for Summary Judgment to be granted but would rather the suit can go on to trial with a jury to recover the losses and damages caused to her by the defendants.

Since the motion for Summary Judgment is in question, the defendant’s two moot court attorneys, Ben Walton and Jordan VanMeter, will go first. Attorney Ben Walton states, “that there is no evidence of actual knowledge of visible intoxication” under the Indiana’s Dram Shop Act, Indiana Code 7.1-5-10-15.5. The Dram Shop Act basically state that a bartender who furnishes an alcoholic beverage to a person is not held liable in a civil action for damages caused by the impairment or intoxication of the person who was served unless the person who furnished...