The two announcers were discussing a local bar located near a state university that was running cheap drink specials every night of the week in the hopes of attracting student clientel. They were debating wether or not this bar should be held responsible for the deeds of the drunken students.
This trend of blaming a bar for the misdeeds of its patrons is one that has bothered me for years. Now this is an issue with some gray area. If a person who is visibly drunk, and I mean stumbling around and slurring words, goes into a bar and asks for a drink I think it should be illegal for the bar to serve him/her. I also think that if the bar does serve that person it should be held responsible, in part, if that person gets into a drunk driving accident, assaults somebody or generally carries on like an asshole and gets his/her self in trouble. A law to this effect is already on the books in many states and is called a Dram Shop law. The law also applies to minors in most instances. Fourty-three states and Washington D.C. have Dram Shop laws. Seven states do not.
Here's where the gray area kicks in: What if the drunk is with a group of people and isn't neccessarily the one buying the drinks? What if the person is 6'7" and weighs 300lbs and doesn't always show clear evidence of intoxication? In Dram Shop cases what the prosecution or plaintiff has to prove in order to successfully win a Dram Shop case is:
- The person was very obviously intoxicated.
- The server had ample oppurtunity to observe the person's intoxicated state yet served them anyway.
So it would seem fairly easy for bars to avoid litigation by simply keeping an eye on patrons and not serving drunks. It works in theory, but in reality you and I know that bars are often very crowded and the bartenders are kept extremely busy. In most of the places I go it would be very easy for a person to pull themselves together for a few minutes while they're ordering a drink. They aren't going to be staggering if they get themselves seated first and the bartender is unlikely to hear any slurred words over the sounds of talking and music.
Another fact to keep in mind is that at the current legal BAC limit of 0.10, or lower in some states, there are not many people who would actually be visibly drunk, yet they would be legally drunk. Not to mention the fact that alcohol does different things to different people. One person may be able to drink 4 shots of whiskey and be in control (though probably legally drunk). Another person might drink just one shot and then drive their car into somebody's house. Is the bar responsible for serving that person's activites after serving them just one shot?
Most of these cases end up with testimony from bar employees (saying they didn't notice the drunk) vs. testimony from witnesses in the bar (saying that the bartender had served the drunk).
While Dram Shop laws are fine in theory, in application they fail. In my experience, these cases are quite hard to prove in court and are rarely successful except for in extreme cases. I hope it remains that way until some better system of getting people home safely from their out on the town arrives.