A receipt from the restaurant shows a patron drinking a variety of alcohol drinks. The next day, that person is in the middle of a traffic accident. In the case of an attorney looking into potential dram shop liability the receipt can be used as evidence. However, it isn’t a guarantee whether the restaurant served an intoxicated customer or if employees did not comply with the appropriate procedure. What transpired between drink orders may be more telling.
In order to understand the pattern, you need to examine the alcohol service as part of a hospitality service. You can’t simply take a look at the number of drinks consumed after an incident.
Receipts are a proof of a sale and not a condition of the purchaser.
Documents at the time of sale may reveal when transactions occurred, what drinks were bought and the costs added to the bill.
The receipt won’t reveal the customer’s behavior when the beverage was ordered. The receipt will not disclose the individual who drank each drink when drinks were shared, as well as what the bartender observed.
An expert witness with experience will assist attorneys in interpreting the documents together with surveillance footage, testimony from employees and any other evidence that is available. It is vital to retrace the entire sequence of services without believing that each purchase will tell the whole story.
What do employees see in the real world?
In many disputes regarding alcohol service, the central issue is whether staff had any reason to suspect that a customer was drunk. Relevant observations include impaired speech or coordination, difficulties maintaining balance or alteration in behavior.
However, these indicators require some context. A single incident captured on surveillance footage could have explanations unrelated to drinking alcohol. Investigators must also look at the camera’s angle, the recording quality location of employees, and if a particular behavior was apparent to employees.
Preston Rideout brings experience as a bartender, bar manager, nightclub general manager, and director of bar operations to these evaluations. His experience in operations helps him identify the duties and limitations of those who work in hectic hospitality settings.
Written Training Doesn’t Always Describe Real Practice
In the majority of investigations involving alcohol, questions are asked about the employee’s training. Does the establishment provide seller-server training to its employees? Were employees taught to recognize potential intoxication? Management explained the procedure for refusing to offer additional services?
Although these questions are crucial to the Responsible Alcohol Service, examining only training certificates may not suffice to answer them.
It is possible for an establishment to have specific policies but not be able to consistently follow the policies. On the other hand, employees may have followed established service standards even when the eventual outcome was devastating.
A review of operations considers the training materials, employee testimony, management oversight, and the actions that were recorded during the incident. It is essential for attorneys representing the plaintiffs and defense to distinguish between the existence of policy and the implementation of it.
Timeline often answers important information
Think about a client being served by multiple bartenders the same time on the course of a busy evening. The first employee might have observed a common behavior. Another bartender could serve a different drink following the shift change. A manager could intervened following the shift change.
If you don’t reconstruct the timeline the decisions could seem to be one continuous action of service. If you are reviewing transaction logs such as staffing plans, surveillance footage, and incident reports, it can be helpful to determine the person who knew what and at what time. Incomplete or missing footage are also to be noted rather than replaced with speculation.
Lawful Liability and Industry Practice are Different Questions
Hospitality experts can provide an explanation of accepted operating practices and evaluate whether a venue’s conduct was consistent with them.
They don’t replace the courts’ responsibility to determine the legality of the liability. The laws for liquor shops differ between states, including the circumstances in which alcohol sellers could be liable for civil actions.
Rideout Hospitality Consulting assists plaintiff and defendant lawyers across the country with reviews of cases, analyses of operations, written opinions and depositions. The company’s focus is on alcohol-related decisions as well as staff training.
The strongest analysis explains what the evidence can’t prove
A drunken incident could be devastating, but the severity of the result can’t be determined by the prior facts.
Lawyers must be able to recognize the documents available, and the limits they have and also how employees would have been expected to act in the particular circumstances.
An in-depth analysis of hospitality can separate the actions that are documented from assumptions and clarifies where the establishment’s policies matched or differed from the accepted norms. This allows courts to determine what happened instead of using only the information discovered after the fact.