The receipt of a restaurant reveals that a customer ordered several alcohol-based drinks. A few hours later, the same customer is involved in a serious accident. For an attorney investigating potential liability of a dram shop the receipt can be used as evidence. But it doesn’t automatically establish whether the establishment served an intoxicated customer or if employees did not follow appropriate procedures. What happened between the drink orders might be more relevant.
Understanding that sequence requires examining the alcohol service as a hospitality service, not just taking note of the number of drinks consumed after an incident.
A receipt is a record of a sale, but not a requirement of the purchaser.
The records at the point of sale can reveal the dates when transactions took place, which beverages were purchased, as well as how charges were assigned to the tab.
A receipt, however, generally does not reveal how a person was behaving when a drink was served. It is not able to determine who drank each beverage and whether or not drinks were shared, or what the bartender was watching.
A professional witness can aid lawyers in the interpretation of these documents in conjunction with interviews with employees and surveillance footage. The objective is to reconstruct the sequence of service without assuming each purchase tells all the story.
What do employees see in real-life?
A central question in many alcohol-service disputes is whether staff had recognizable reasons to believe the client was drunk. The relevant observations include impaired coordination or speech problems, difficulty maintaining balance or changes in behavior.
However, these indicators require the context. A single incident captured in surveillance footage may have a reason that isn’t related to drinking alcohol. Investigators must also take into consideration the quality of the footage angles, the position of the employees and the camera angles.
Preston Rideout brings experience as a bartender, bar manager, nightclub general manager, and director of bar operations to these evaluations. His operational background helps connect documented evidence to the responsibilities and limitations of staff working in busy hospitality environments.
Written Training Doesn’t Always Describe Real Practice
In most alcohol-service investigation inquiries, questions are asked regarding the employee’s preparation. Did the establishment offer server-seller instruction? Did employees receive training on recognizing potential signs of alcohol intoxication? Management has explained to employees the procedure to refuse additional service?
These are the questions that form the basis of Responsible alcohol service, but reviewing training certificates alone may not answer them.
A place may have detailed policies, but fail to consistently implement them. Conversely, employees may have followed the established procedures for service even when the eventual outcome was tragic.
A review of the operational aspects of the policy includes documentation for training, testimonies from employees, management oversight and actions documented during an incident. The distinction between a policy’s existence and its implementation could be crucial for both defense and plaintiff counsel.
Timeline can reveal important answers to your questions
Consider a patron who receives drinks from a variety of bartenders throughout an event that is crowded. The first employee might have noticed normal behavior. A bartender in a different location might have served a second drink after the shift change. A manager could have intervened later.
It’s possible to make these choices appear to be a single continuous act of service without retracing the time line. In reviewing transaction records such as staffing plans, incidents and surveillance footage It can be useful to determine the person who knew what, and at what time. It’s better to know the missing files or videos, instead of speculating.
The issues surrounding legal liability and industrial practice are two different issues.
Hospitality professionals are able to define the operating standards of a facility and decide whether the conduct of the venue is in accordance with these rules.
They don’t replace the courts’ responsibility to determine the legal responsibility. The laws that govern alcohol stores vary from state to state and so do the terms under which they may be legally sued.
Rideout Hospitality Consulting provides support to defense attorneys and plaintiffs in the United States through review of cases, operational analysis writing opinions and trial testimony, depositions and other forms of evidence. The work of the company focuses on alcohol-related decision-making and staff training, as well as management methods, and other pertinent hospitality operations.
The most rigorous analyses are able to explain what the evidence does not reveal.
An alcohol-related incident can result in devastating consequences, however the severity of the result is not able to establish the exact date of the incident.
The attorney must be aware of the information available to him in the case, their limitations, and the expectations of employees in the conditions.
An in-depth analysis of hospitality can separate established actions from beliefs and clarifies where the establishment’s practices aligned with or departed from the accepted norms. This distinction allows courts to evaluate what actually happened rather than solely relying on what became known following the fact.
