A receipt from a restaurant shows a customer having a drink or two. Hours later, that customer is involved in a fatal traffic accident. If an attorney is investigating possible liability of a dram shop, the receipt is relevant. The receipt doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that the establishment served a clearly drunk client or that employees did not follow proper procedures. The most relevant evidence could be what transpired between those drinks ordered.
To understand this sequence, it is necessary to examine alcohol service as a hospitality process and not simply count beverages after an event.
Receipts are evidence of a sale and does not reflect the condition of the buyer.
The records at the point of sale can show when transactions occurred, what drinks were bought and the costs applied to a bill.
The receipt does not provide information about the behavior of a person when they were served an alcohol drink. The receipt might not show who consumed each drink even if the drinks were shared, as well as how the bartender was observing.
An experienced Expert Witness can help attorneys interpret these records alongside surveillance footage, employee statements, and other available evidence. The goal is to reconstruct the entire service process without believing that each purchase will tell the entire story.
What can employees observe in the real world?
One of the most crucial issues in alcohol-related disputes is whether employees had reason to suspect the patron was intoxicated. Relevant observations could include impaired coordination, unusual speaking and a difficulty in maintaining equilibrium or noticeable behavioral changes.
But these indicators still need contextualization. Any single action recorded in surveillance footage could have a reason that isn’t related to alcohol. Investigators also need to consider how the recording is done as well as the positions of employees and camera angles.
Preston Rideout’s work as a professional bartender, manager of a bar and general manager of the nightclub, and director of operations for bars is evident in these assessments. His operational background permits him to link recorded evidence with the duties of employees working in bustling hospitality environments.
Written Training Doesn’t Always Describe Real Practice
The majority of alcohol-related investigations focus on the preparation of employees. Did the establishment provide seller-server instruction? Did the establishment provide training to employees to spot signs of intoxication? Management has explained to employees the process for refusing additional service?
These questions are central to responsible alcohol service, however studying training certificates alone will not be able to answer these questions.
It can be possible for a facility to have policies that are detailed, but not be able to consistently follow them. In the reverse scenario employees may have followed the guidelines even though it was a tragedy.
A review of operations considers the training materials, employee testimony supervision by management, as well as any actions that were documented in the incident. The difference between the existence of a policy and the actual implementation of it can be crucial for both the defense and plaintiff lawyers.
Timeline often answers crucial questions
Imagine a client being served drinks by a variety of bartenders during a busy night. The first employee might have seen a typical behavior. A second bartender may have served another beverage after an alteration in shift. A manager could have intervened afterward.
It is possible to make these decisions appear to be one continuous service, without reconstructing the time line. If you are reviewing transaction logs, staffing plans, surveillance footage and incident reports it’s helpful to know who was aware of what and when. It is better to determine if there are any missing records or footage, rather than speculating.
Industry Practice and legal Liability are two different questions
Hospitality professionals can explain and judge if a facility adheres to the accepted operating procedures.
They are not a substitute for the court’s responsibility to determine legal liability. Dram shop laws differ among states, including the specific circumstances under which alcohol providers may face civil claims.
Rideout Hospitality Consulting assists plaintiff and defendant lawyers across the country through review of the case, analysis of operations, writing opinions, and depositions. Its services include alcohol-related decisions, staff training management practices, as well as any other relevant hospitality operations.
The most powerful analysis explains why the evidence does not show
The seriousness of an alcohol-related incident is not able to be used to determine the validity of previous events.
The attorney must understand the documents available in the case, their limitations, and the expectations of employees in the circumstances.
An analysis of hospitality is a thorough way to separate assumptions from documented actions and determine whether the venue practices were in line to accepted norms or not. This lets courts evaluate what transpired instead of using only the information found after the fact.