Now I know bartenders have to not over serve a customer as well as not let a clearly drunk customer drive home, they even have to take courses/get a license to serve.
Say a drunk customer at the end of the night goes to leave (the bartender knows they plan on driving) at that point the bartender should say to the drunk customer “hey I cant let you drive home, you have to call a ride/walk/ or we will even call an Uber for you”
but let’s say the customer refuses and does not comply? Is the bartender supposed to just take the car keys anyway and not let them leave? What is the bartender supposed to do?
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Term is “Dram shop law,” it is sometimes statutory sometimes common law based, and your answer varies state-to-state.
It varies significantly based on state and local laws, but from my understanding it’s pretty hard for a bartender to actually get in trouble for over serving someone. You’d generally have to prove that the bartender could tell that they were far too intoxicated than is safe and intentionally kept serving them in order to cause them harm, either purposefully or due to negligence.
Realistically I feel like it would have to be someone who like can’t speak or stand and the bartender is still serving them multiple drinks.
I bartend in a state that practices the Dram Shop Law, the liability is difficult to prove because some people hold their liquor better than others, and I don’t know what else you’ve had to drink. If you’re slurring your words, can’t balance, your eyes can’t focus, you you’re nodding off, you’re definitely getting cut off. While we try to get them some water and an Uber home, we’ve all had people close, leave and drive off…. You can’t stop them all. If they get pulled over they get a D.U.I., and where or what they drank isn’t considered. If they get into an accident and someone decided to sue, you and the establishment can be held liable if they can prove you got them intoxicated, but you have to be the last place they drank at, and have served them enough to have potentially gotten them to that state.
It depends on the country, in some countries it is illegal to serve alcohol to someone who is already drunk.
As with most laws this varies. But in all states of the US I know of, such laws are only concerned with serving alcohol to someone exhibiting signs of intoxication. It’s also mostly for civil liability, although it can be criminal as well. I know of no laws (in the US) that require a bartender to physically compel someone to turn over their keys or take affirmative action to prevent them from driving…. The laws typically just create liability for the provision of alcohol to someone who is observably intoxicated, if it can be established that an injury they caused to someone else was a result of their intoxication.
It’s usually not the bartender who will get in legal trouble (unless it’s documented they were pouring shots down the throat of someone trying to refuse), the one at risk is the license holder, who could permanently lose that ability to serve along with various civil charges.
That being said, if a patron is drunk, clearly intending to drive, the best the bartender (or other staff) can do if they won’t stay, call 911 follow them to their car and provide all the info possible so the police can hopefully stop things before it gets worse.
In almost every state, bartenders who serve customers who are already intoxicated open themselves up to both civil and criminal penalties. But the laws are about serving. I’m not sure any state has a law that requires the bartender, or anyone else, to physically prevent the customer from driving away.
But the customer getting into an accident is one sure way for the bartender’s mistake (in overserving) to come to the attention of the authorities, so the bartender does have a vested interest in preventing that person from driving drunk. Yes, they offer to call a rideshare, keep the customer’s car safe, etc. Doing anything physical would probably be going too far, but the bartender could always call the police and report that an intoxicated patron is about to drive away.
The whole thing is a textbook example of an “imperfect duty.” We legally demand that bartenders not serve customers to the point of intoxication, as if people go to bars for any other reason. (Can you imagine a bar even staying in business if it limited drinks to 1 per hour?) We pretend that there’s no gap–an enormous one, for some people–between a BAC of 0.08 and being so drunk the bartender cuts them off. We allow bars to be built in locations with no transportation other than cars, even though it absolutely guarantees a certain amount of drunk driving. I don’t envy this part of a bartender’s job.
In my state, you’d have had to refuse service in the first place (to anyone visibly intoxicated). Taking someone’s keys means that you fucked up and kept serving them anyway, but at least you’re covering your ass somewhat. Bars are liable for alcohol related incidents and the first thing that gets investigated is where did they get drunk. Again, just speaking about my state (PA). I’m not aware of the legality of actually seizing the keys (I suspect that’s not legal, but you weren’t supposed to need to do so in the first place).
In Ontario, the law skews pretty heavily towards blaming the bartender and the bar who served the drunk. If a bartender serves someone and they kill someone, the bartender is liable too. There’s obviously a big difference between giving someone one drink and giving someone 9, but in basically every case the bartender has some.liability.
As an example from my own restaurant life, a customer came into one or our rivals’ restaurants and had 3 beers and garlic bread over a 1 hour period, perfectly in line with smart serve when this happened back in 2011. The customer had been drinking at home beforehand and the bartender didn’t know, and now the customer was drunk from the 3 more beers. Visibly intoxicated, the bartender wouldn’t let the guy drive home and drove him home himself, getting a cook to drive the guy’s car home too. They drop the guy at home, watch him go in his door, and leave. He waited for them to leave and then got in his car and went for McDonald’s, and killed 2 kids on the drive. Had a BAC of .7 at the station and it was argued there was no way someone that drunk hadn’t shown signs of intoxication when the bartender served them. Bartender almost went to jail, but luckily they had tape. They showed he wasn’t visibly intoxicated when he came in.
Another example, 9 young men go into a bar with no visible signs of intoxication and have their first round, a beer and a shot each. One of them immediately gets in a fight with another patron and throws him through a second-story window. Guy gets a broken back. Bartender spent a year in prison and both the bartender and the business had a 250k fine. That was the only drinks they had had that night btw.
This would only become an issue if the driver hit someone – injured someone. In this case the injured person will hire an attorney. The attorney is going to go after every single angle they can think of which will include the restaurant, bar, server, valet person, everything and everyone will be contacted. If the lawyer thinks there is a chance to get more money, they will continue with charges.
In your example, if the bartender tried to stop the driver and did everything they could to prevent the driver from driving drunk, they are safe. But you never know. Depends on so many things.
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