## Facts

- Leticia B. Morales, a 31-year-old mother of three, visited a riverboat casino operated by Argosy Gaming Co. with two companions.
- After arriving not intoxicated, Morales repeatedly ordered cocktails and played slot machines over several hours while her companions gambled.
- Witnesses described Morales as becoming visibly and severely intoxicated, loud, and disruptive; casino security forcibly removed her from the boat.
- Police were called when Morales attempted to drive, but the companions persuaded officers to let them take her home.
- After the companions had difficulty driving Morales’s car, Morales insisted on driving herself and left alone.
- Morales died in a high-speed rollover crash off the vessel; post-accident testing showed a blood-alcohol concentration more than twice the legal limit.
- The estate and the children sued under Iowa’s dram shop statute, alleging the casino served Morales while she was visibly intoxicated and that the overservice proximately caused her death and the children’s loss of parental consortium.

## Issues

1. Whether federal admiralty/maritime law preempted application of Iowa Code § 123.92 to a claim based on overservice of alcohol on a riverboat casino when the resulting injury occurred in an off-vessel automobile crash.
2. Whether alleged evidentiary, jury-instruction, and sufficiency-of-the-evidence errors required reversal of the plaintiffs’ verdict and damages award.

## Decision

- The court held that federal admiralty/maritime law did not preempt Iowa’s Dram Shop Act in these circumstances.
- The court affirmed the trial court’s instruction applying Iowa Code § 123.92 and upheld the jury’s verdict for plaintiffs, including $1.25 million in loss-of-parental-consortium damages.
- The court found no reversible error in the defendant’s additional claims concerning evidence, instructions, or the sufficiency of the proof.

## Legal Principles

- State law may apply in a maritime setting unless displaced by a conflicting federal statute or an established federal maritime rule requiring uniformity.
- Where no federal maritime dram-shop statute or uniform federal maritime common law provides a dram-shop liability rule, state dram-shop remedies are not preempted by admiralty principles.
- State remedial schemes may supplement maritime law when they do not frustrate federal maritime policy and do not threaten a recognized federal interest in national uniformity.
- Under Iowa Code § 123.92, a liquor licensee may be civilly liable for injuries proximately caused by selling or serving alcohol to a person who is intoxicated (or reasonably expected to become intoxicated), including resulting wrongful-death-related damages.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed liability and damages against a riverboat casino under Iowa’s Dram Shop Act, holding that admiralty law did not preempt the state statute because no federal maritime dram-shop regime existed and applying the state remedy did not conflict with maritime policies.


Horak v. Argosy Gaming Co., 648 N.W.2d 137 (Iowa 2002)