In Spring 2020, a drunk driver changed one north Texas family's lives forever. A mother, father, and their 2-year-old son were driving home on a Monday evening, when at a non-descript intersection, a speeding drunk driver ran through a stop sign and t-boned their vehicle. As a result of the crash, the mother lost one of her eyes, and the 2-year-old suffered a serious brain injury that will impact him for the rest of his life.
This wasn't just a matter of the drunk driver having a drink or two too many, either. Based on the toxicology tests conducted in the aftermath of the crash, it is quite likely that the drunk driver was as much as three times the legal limit at the time of the collision. For most people, this level of intoxication not only impairs their ability to drive, but can lead to nausea, vomiting, or even blacking out. And this guy was out driving.
To make matters worse, this horrific incident didn't happen in a vacuum. The drunk driver had help. The family didn't know it at the time, but the drunk driver whose reckless behavior changed their lives had been drinking at two different restaurants prior to the crash. This is the story about how they held the drunk driver and the restaurants accountable, obtained the help they needed to cope with their losses, and sent a message to the restaurant industry that helps make all of us just a bit safer on the roads.
A Devastated Family Reaches Out for Help
After the crash, the family knew that their lives wouldn't be the same. In the quest to save their son's life, they incurred nearly a quarter of a million dollars in medical bills. That number didn't include the numerous future treatments and other assistance he would require to live as normal a life as possible. It also didn't account for the fact that it's uncertain if he'll ever have the ability to hold a job when he grows up. And how does one even begin to come to terms with the idea that other people, through their carelessness, hurt the one you love most in the world in a way from which they may never fully recover?
All this family knew was that a drunk driver crashed into their vehicle and now it was their responsibility to pick up the pieces and put their family back together. What they didn't know was the law, which is why they reached out to an attorney for help figuring out the way forward.
A Family's Attorney Partners With Grossman Law Offices
The family knew an attorney, who agreed to take on their case. It turned out to be a wise choice. A less skilled attorney may have assumed that you just file suit against the drunk driver, collect his insurance money and move on. It would have been a quick win for the attorney, but the family would have still been left with hundreds of thousands in debt and no means to provide for the care their son needs in the future.
Worse still, only pursuing the drunk driver would have left the restaurants who served him off the hook. Thankfully, the family's attorney conducted a rigorous, professional investigation and discovered that the drunk driver had been drinking at two different restaurants prior to the crash. He also knew that in addition to pursuing a negligence claim against the drunk driver, it was also possible that a dram shop case existed against the restaurant.
For those who don't know, dram shop is the Texas law that allows for those injured by bars and restaurants who overserve obviously intoxicated customers to hold those establishments accountable for any injuries that result from their actions. It's also an area of the the law that many personal injury attorneys aren't terribly familiar with.
That's when this attorney reached out to Grossman Law Offices to gauge our interest in partnering on the case. He knew that few firms in Texas can match Grossman Law Offices' experience with dram shop cases. Given what his clients had gone through (and still go through to this day), this attorney wanted to ensure the everyone who contributed to their crash was held to account. That meant he needed a firm that could not only tell him if there was a viable dram shop claim, but to help litigate that portion of the case if it turned out to be actionable.
It probably doesn't need to be said that when we heard about his clients' situation and that restaurants may have played a role in their crash, we didn't hesitate to partner with him.
What Did the Dram Shop Investigation Uncover?
By the time we became involved, our partnering attorney had done an excellent job establishing that the drunk driver had been drinking at two different restaurants prior to the crash. This gave us a head start in the case. But knowing that a drunk driver drank at a bar and proving that a bar contributed to a drunk driving accident are two different matters.
It's standard in these types of investigations to ask a court to make the defendants hand over receipts, video footage, internal company messages regarding the incident, and lists of employees working at the time of the crash. In asking for this evidence, attorneys seek to show that a restaurant or bar knew, or should have known, that the drunk was obviously intoxicated but went ahead and kept serving him.
Obviously, surveillance footage is often vital in these kinds of cases. When you can show a jury that someone was stumbling around, unsteady in their seat, picking fights, or being overly amorous with other guests it's a lot easier to show the jury that the drunk should not have been served more alcohol. As fate would have it, this case wouldn't to be that simple. The surveillance video for the night of the incident was not available.
While this wasn't ideal, our attorneys also knew that there is more than one way to make a dram shop case. The toxicology reports showed that the drunk driver was three times the legal limit at the time he crashed his car into our clients' vehicle. We knew he was exceptionally drunk, now it was just a matter of proving that the restaurants in the case provided him with alcohol when they should not have done so.
Receipts from both places also established that each restaurant sold the drunk a large amount of alcohol. Between the two restaurants, evidence shows the staff served the equivalent of 11 drinks in a 4 and half hour period.
Perhaps most damning for the restaurants, an internal incident report at one establishment showed that the staff realized just how drunk the patron was when they saw him stumbling out of the restroom. This memo stated that staff were so concerned they called a cab for the man and his companion, before escorting them out of the restaurant. While outside, they witnessed the drunk arguing with his companion, before storming off, refusing the cab, and falling on the way to his truck. This occurred mere minutes before the collision that upended our clients' lives.
At this point we had solid evidence that the restaurants in question screwed up pretty badly. Had we stopped there and taken what we had in front of a jury, it's quite likely that the jury would have pieced the evidence together and sided with our clients. But in the a case of this magnitude, leaving it up to a jury to put the pieces together is a job only half done. The case needed evidence that made it clear that the restaurants served an obviously intoxicated person who then went on to harm our clients.
Using the Employees' Words to Show They Served an Obviously Intoxicated Patron
Given the stakes for the clients, and our record litigating hundreds of dram shop cases, our attorneys were not about to leave anything to chance. It would have been simply unacceptable to leave any aspect of the case blank and to hope a jury would fill it in the blanks. Instead, our attorneys determined that they needed to question those who served the alcohol under oath and leave no doubt that they had served an obviously intoxicated person.
Now this was a real case, not a courtroom drama. No amount of pressure was going to get these servers to admit that they served an obviously intoxicated person. In fact, our experience tells us that most servers and restaurants will go through the entire litigation never once considering the possibility that they did something unsafe.
We also know that people in this situation have the misfortune of being questioned under oath by attorney Keith Purdue. What alcohol providers and restaurant workers don't know going into a deposition is that Mr. Purdue's years of experience litigating dram shop cases means that he knows the law, the science behind intoxication, as well as safe alcohol serving standards better than they do. His experience means he's also seen about every evasive answer that a server can give.
Having deposed hundreds of servers over the years, Mr. Purdue was well aware that, generally speaking, servers in these situations want to come across as knowing how to serve alcohol safely and certainly did so on the night in question. Their statements generally amount to a circular argument that "I couldn't have served alcohol in an unsafe manner because I practice serving safely." And in every case, Mr. Purdue lets them go on the record with this argument, pretty much letting them serve out the words that they'll eventually choke on.
The reason things go so poorly for theses servers is because, without fail, in a dram shop case, those alleged to have served a drunk are poorly trained, don't know the scientific basics of intoxication, and instead rely on outdated myths about serving safely. After letting a server spout nonsense and debunked myths about safe alcohol service, Mr. Purdue confronts them with how intoxication really works, proven guidelines for safe alcohol service, and what effective training actually is. The end result is that the attorneys for bars and restaurants realize that there is no way they want this testimony to occur in front of a jury.
That's exactly what happened in this case. Neither restaurant had an adequate safety program in place. They didn't properly train their servers on the signs of intoxication. In fact, their own safety manuals had page after page of restaurant approved alcohol selling techniques, but next to nothing about when and how to stop service to intoxicated patrons. While the evidence up to that point required a jury to reach the right conclusions, the performance of certain key witnesses deposed by Keith Purdue, left little doubt that a jury would not find them credible in the least. In fact, their display would only serve to make the circumstantial evidence even more damning, leaving no room for the jury to reach the wrong conclusion.
A Bittersweet Conclusion
The restaurants saw the writing on the wall and agreed to settle with our clients for combined total of $10,310,000. They paid a steep price for their role in what our clients had to endure because of the drunk driving crash.
Perhaps most importantly, our clients obtained a bit of relief from their life-altering ordeal. But with all of that accomplished, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that while our clients are in a better position to weather the storm they find themselves in, their lives will never go back to how they were before the crash.
No family would ever willingly sign up to endure what this family has had to go through for any amount of money. None of us can put ourselves in their shoes, but we all owe this family a debt of gratitude because their efforts conveyed to the restaurant industry that the costs of ignoring alcohol safety can be steep. There is no way that word of this recovery will not make it's way around the industry. And it's too big a recovery for other restaurants to ignore. So while, this family never asked to be put in this situation, they've done their part to ensure that someone else's family doesn't have to bear the burdens they do.