Women found liable for drunk friend's death

Songjiang District People's Court has ordered two women to each pay 154,025 yuan ($25,286) yuan to the family of a friend who fell out of a window and died after a drunken night out together, local media reported Wednesday.

The court ruled that the two defendants were negligent for leaving their intoxicated friend alone after they returned from a night out on April 16, according to a press release from Songjiang District People's Court. The court did not identify the parties involved in the case.

The plaintiffs, the deceased woman's parents, sued the two women for 2 million yuan on the grounds that they were liable for their daughter's death, the court said. They accused the defendants of negligence for leaving their daughter alone in an apartment bedroom while she was intoxicated. Furthermore, they blamed the defendants of allowing their daughter to drink too much at dinner and failing to contact her family after she got drunk.

In court, the defendants argued that they were not responsible for their friend's death and suggested that the fall might have been a suicide, the court said. They said it was the victim who asked them out for dinner, where she drank one and half bottles of yellow rice wine.

After dinner, they accompanied several other friends to a late night snack at 11 pm. The defendants said they tried to stop their friend from drinking, but she would not listen. She ended up drinking a beer and another bottle of rice wine, leaving her extremely drunk.

To prevent her from driving home intoxicated, they took her to an apartment in Sijing town in Songjiang district. They suggested that they share the same bed, but she refused and went to sleep in a separate bedroom. The next morning, her body was found on the ground outside the bedroom's window.

The defendants argued that the window was not wide enough for an adult to accidentally fall out of, the court said.

The court determined that there wasn't enough evidence to support the suicide argument. An investigation found that the woman was still intoxicated when she died, which suggested that she might have mistaken the window for a door, the court said.

The court acknowledged that the defendants made an effort to take care of their friend, but ruled that it was dangerous to leave an intoxicated person alone in a room with a window that is wide enough to fall out of.

The court found that the defendants were partially liable for their friend's death.