Abstract
In its July 2021 decision, Morris v. Giant Four Corners, the New Mexico Supreme Court held that the doctrine of negligent entrustment includes liability for someone who supplies gasoline to a person they knew or should have known was intoxicated. While the Morris court’s decision is novel in New Mexico, courts will likely interpret the inclusion narrowly, restricting the duty to circumstances where a commercial transaction enabled a DWI. By reviewing the decisions of other jurisdictions to include certain commercial transactions under negligent entrustment claims and the impact those decisions had on subsequent litigation, this article argues that Morris will not lead to a slippery slope regarding commercial transactions in negligent entrustment law. The argument is further bolstered by an examination of the particular policy analysis behind the Morris decision. This article concludes by briefly considering some of the specific concerns raised by critics of the decision.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Annika Cleveland,
Negligent Commercial Transactions: Does New Mexico Face a Slippery Slope After Morris?,
53
N.M. L. Rev.
183
(2023).
Available at:
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol53/iss1/7
