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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Obviously intoxicated
This City Pages post discusses a slight uptick in the number of citations to bars for overserving customers. Here's the law, section 340A.502:
No person may sell, give, furnish, or in any way procure for another alcoholic beverages for the use of an obviously intoxicated person.
"Obviously intoxicated" is not defined in the statutes, even though they can't vote (204C.06), can be kicked out of hotels (327.73), or buy more booze.
Therein lies the tension. People go to bars for several reasons, including to get drunk. The last several years have seen an alarming trend in defining down intoxication. Drink 2 beers and you're unfit to drive. Drink 4 beers in a night and you're binge drinking.
I like the law. Bartenders should have some responsibility to determine who has had too much to drink. But we need to be honest with tavern owners and ourselves, especially as we define "drunk" down. Does "obviously intoxicated" mean .08? Does it mean slurred speech or delayed reactions?
The standard should be safety, not obviousness. A person can be obviously drunk, but safe to serve. It's only when a bartender recklessly provides enough alcohol to a patron to that he becomes a danger to himself or others that liability should attach.
That seems the case in the City Pages story. It sounds like the patron was heaving into a bucket for quite awhile. The problem is that the law cannot be applied literally, which creates the conditions to apply the law unfairly.
2 Comments:
In WI we don't have dramshop laws. Although with all the drunk idiots walking into the river in this area that may change--at least at the municipal level.
The family of one of the idiots sued UW-L because the drunk bus that they sponsored was alleged to encourage binge drinking. No good deed goes unpunished.
By 
, at
9:00 PM
And without the drunk bus, someone would've sued over a DUI death.
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