A receipt in the restaurant shows a patron drinking a variety of alcohol drinks. After a few hours the same patron is involved in a serious accident. A receipt is important for attorneys investigating potential dram shops liability. It doesn’t necessarily establish if the restaurant served a customer who was clearly drunk, or the employees did not follow rules. What transpired between the drink orders could be more clear.
In order to understand the sequence, you must take a look at the alcohol services as a part of a genuine hospitality operation. You cannot simply make a list of drinks in the aftermath of an incident.
A receipt records a sale and not the actual condition of a buyer
The records at the point of sale will reveal the date and time transactions took place, what beverages have been purchased and the amount put on a bill.
However, a receipt generally cannot show how a customer was acting when they were served a drink. It’s not always possible to know who drank the drink, particularly if they were shared or what the bartender noticed.
A qualified Expert Witness will help attorneys interpret the records and also the video surveillance, witness testimony of employees as well as any other evidence. The objective is to reconstruct the sequence of service without assuming that every purchase tells the complete story.
What can employees observe?
In many disputes over alcohol services, the main issue is whether staff had any reason to suspect that a customer was drunk. Relevant observations might include impaired coordination, unusual speech, difficulty maintaining balance, or observable changes in behavior.
However, these indicators need contextualization. Any single action recorded in surveillance footage could have an explanation unrelated to alcohol. Investigators should also take into consideration camera angles, recording quality position of employees and whether a particular act would be seen by the employees.
Preston Rideout brings experience as a bartender, bar manager, nightclub general manager, and director of bar operations to these evaluations. The operational knowledge he has gained helps him connect recorded evidence to the responsibilities and limitations of those who work in hectic hospitality environments.
Written Training Doesn’t Always Describe Real Practice
The majority of alcohol-service investigations focus on the preparation of employees. Was there any formal training for server-servers who sold the drinks? Was the establishment able to instruct its employees on how to recognize intoxication? Did management discuss ways to deny additional service?
The answers to these questions could be in the certificates of training but they’re not enough.
A facility may maintain specific guidelines but not always follow them. In the opposite situation employees may have followed the guidelines even if the incident was tragic.
An operational review includes training materials and testimony from employees. Also, it considers the management’s oversight and the actions documented in the incident. The distinction between a policy’s existence and its actual implementation can be significant for both defense and plaintiff counsel.
The Timeline Often Reveals the Important questions
Consider a client who is served by several bartenders the same time during an evening of high activity. It is possible that the first employee observed a normal behaviour. Following a shift change the second employee might have served an additional beverage. Then, a manager could have intervened.
It’s possible to make these choices appear to be one continuous service, without retracing the time line. By examining all the relevant information, including transaction records and staffing schedules as well as surveillance footage and incident report together, will reveal who was responsible and for what. It’s better to find out whether there’s missing documents or footage instead of guessing.
Legal Liability and the Practice of Industry are Different Questions
Hospitality professionals can help explain and assess whether a place follows the established operating guidelines.
They do not replace the courts’ responsibility to determine legal liability. The laws governing liquor stores differ across states, including the specific circumstances in which alcohol sellers could have to answer civil claims.
Rideout Hospitality Consulting assists plaintiff and defendant attorneys across the United States with reviews of cases, analyses of operations, written opinions and depositions. The focus of its work is on alcohol-related decision-making and staff training.
The Strongest Analysis Accounts for What the Evidence Doesn’t Show
Alcohol-related events can have serious consequences, but their severity cannot be determined based on all the facts.
Lawyers must be able to recognize the documents available and their limitations in addition to how employees should have been expected to behave in specific circumstances.
A careful hospitality analysis separates the actions that are documented from assumptions and provides a clear explanation of where the hotel’s practices were in line with or diverged from established standards. This distinction lets courts evaluate what occurred instead of using only the information discovered after the fact.