Supreme Court rules on drunk driving case
Two friends who conspired to buy beer for a teenager who later killed an aspiring physician while driving drunk are not legally responsible for damages, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said in a decision released Tuesday.
While the friends had an agreement to buy alcohol, the agreement did not include driving while intoxicated, the high court found in a decision written by Justice Patience Roggensack.
The court was divided 4-3 on the case with Justices Shirley Abrahamson, Louis Butler and Ann Walsh Bradley dissenting.
As the court put it, the case involved an ill-conceived idea of some teenagers to "get some beer" that culminated in tragedy the next morning when Robert Zimmerlee, 19, of Greenfield, blew through a stop sign in West Allis and smashed into the driver's side of a vehicle driven by Christopher Richards, 25, in January 2003.
The night before the accident, Zimmerlee and David Schrimpf, also of Greenfield, were together. Schrimpf got Tomakia Pratchet, an older a co-worker at a West Allis restaurant, to buy an 18-pack of beer. They went to a party where Zimmerlee reportedly...