Top court ruling in liquor-law case appears to apply a new standard
The court also clarified that bartenders and servers can't be prosecuted for serving someone too much alcohol unless that standard for public intoxication is met.
"We hold that the may endanger element of the intoxication standard requires proof of a reasonable likelihood of harm based on the circumstances; a speculative possibility of harm is not sufficient," wrote Justice Jill N. Parrish.
The opinion, with which all of the other justices concurred, came in the case of Due South Inc., a company that operates as the Murray club Southern X-posure. In a 22-page ruling, the high court sent the case back to district court to consider whether the club is liable for violating Utah's liquor laws.
The ruling sided with prosecutors on a few issues and with the club on others, but lawyers for both sides agree that the high court's decision interpreted state law in such a way that it applies a new standard for such cases.
David Eckersley, attorney for Southern Exposure, deemed the ruling a victory for his client.
Eckersley cited two key elements in the complex and detailed ruling that he considered a win for the club:
• The high court ruled that in order to be considered intoxicated, a person who is consuming alcohol in a club must be determined to be dangerous to himself or others through his conduct, not through simple observations of such things as a flushed face or changes in speech.
• To find that a club violated the law, there must be evidence that employees serving the alcohol intended to give liquor to someone they knew was already drunk, or that the server acted recklessly in doing so.
Utah's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control in 2002 undertook an informal administrative disciplinary proceeding involving Southern Exposure after two customers who were drinking there were involved in a car accident that killed one of them, and the other, the driver, was found to be drunk.
Shortly afterward, the State Bureau of Inspection did an undercover investigation in which it found that five club patrons were allowed to become intoxicated.
The DABC Commission concluded that Southern X-posure had kept serving the first two men liquor even after they were obviously drunk in the first incident, and that the club let five people become intoxicated in the second incident. However, the commission did not find enough evidence that the club continued serving those five patrons after they became drunk.
Recent comments
To slmaverick
Would you think it was just silly if it had been…Commoner | Oct. 11, 2008 at 11:19 a.m.
This is a very positive case that every club owner, club member,…
uncannygunman | Oct. 10, 2008 at 9:39 p.m.
JUST SILLY... we must live in Utah.
slmaverick | Oct. 10, 2008 at 5:06 p.m.
