Dram Shop Liability Lawyer

Our firm handles dram shop cases. Dram shop is another name for a liquor store back in the day. And so these are liquor liability cases. These are cases where a liquor store or some sort of establishment has over-served a patron. And that person either goes out and injures another or even injures themselves as a result of being obviously intoxicated. And so our firm has been . . . we've been proud to represent the families of victims of over-serving of alcohol and the devastating consequences of that in our society. So a liquor liability case, or a dram shop case, the defendants could be a bar. It could be a store, a restaurant. And it certainly would be the driver of the vehicle at issue. And if it's . . . If you know, they injured you. This area of liability law, personal injury law is complicated by what the legislature did to protect bars and servers of alcohol. They created what we call "a safe harbor defense." That means that if their servers go to a one-hour class and get certified, that the bar can throw that defense up and say, "We have no liability in this case." And what that does is it has had a dramatic impact of scaring off and preventing good lawyers from handling those cases, because in essence, what it requires you to do now is to depose those witnesses, those servers, track them down, and actually get them to provide evidence that contradicts the safe harbor that they took shots while on duty. That they were encouraged to over serve. Maybe there was financial incentives. And so you can't get that evidence without digging into the case, and digging into the case requires resources that we have that some firms don't. And so, yes, the safe harbor has had the unintended, I think, consequence, or maybe it is intended, of protecting bars and server . . . providers of alcohol, and have made those cases harder, but we know how to handle them. Well, let me explain why it's important to get a lawyer immediately when you or your family has been involved in a drunk driving accident. Our paralegal Mike Robinson, in the last drunk driving case we had, he was at the police station within the week asking them for body camera video, dashcam video of the drunk driver. And so we knew that when we made a claim for the family that the insurance company for the drunk driver would say . . . would respond like they normally do, which is, well, the driver may not have been as intoxicated, or they refute . . . you know, they refute liability. Getting that evidence, that video evidence totally destroyed the defense in that case. It was clear that that driver, and getting that evidence quickly, and preserving that evidence, gave us a distinct advantage in that case.