Should Penalties For Over-serving Be A Thing?
Three clubs are being sued for over-serving a patron who later crashed his car into a house.
This is a tough topic and I think it's all about where you draw the line? Of course, someone who is visibly drunk shouldn't be served, but from there it gets complicated.
First off, there has to be a measure of personal responsibility when it comes to these matters. If you make these mistakes, you should be the one to have to pay for them, not the servers who took a three-hour online course and in most cases, not even the club owners.
Next up, what if the person drank quickly and wasn't intoxicated until the full force of the alcohol hit? This question has always intrigued me and I guess it's one of those things you work out in court.
Then there's the multi-stop aspect of this case. How was bar A supposed to know what bar B served and so on with bar C. ? How do these three communicate?
I'm very much with you that when a person drinks too much and creates some damage that they should pay, but at least to a small degree, laws about overserving are really about lawyers being able to make those with the deepest pockets pay, not the ones who are most responsible, and that would be the drinkers themselves.
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