Client Stories: Woman’s Death Shows Another Side of Dram Shop Law
In the case we'll discuss today, the bar involved over-served a woman to such an outrageous degree that, while attempting to sleep it off in her car, she passed away from alcohol poisoning.
Dram Shop and Sexual Assault
The news broke yesterday in Dallas that around 3:00 a.m. Saturday, a man, potentially posing as a driver for a ride-sharing service, picked up a woman who was looking for a ride home and sexually assaulted her. The news reports I heard on KRLD news radio made it sound less like he was driving around...
Can I Sue If an Intoxicated Person Hurts Me at a Bar?
We talk a lot at the firm about how dram shop law helps people who are injured by intoxicated drivers. As a matter of fact, as one of the state's leading dram shop firms we're proud of our record of advocacy for drunk driving victims. It occurred to me the other day that many people...
How Do Dram Shop Laws Benefit Children?
Perhaps one of the most misused arguments in favor of a law or government program is that "it's for the children." People who use this argument often do so in order to stop a debate, instead of starting one. This will not be one of those occasions. I recently read about a horrific crash in...
Nip It In the Bottle: Better to Prevent DWI Crashes Than to Litigate Them After It’s Too Late.
We spend a lot of time writing about dram shop law, which provides an avenue to remedy for people injured due to an establishment's unlawful alcohol service. When someone is over-served at a bar or restaurant it often has dire consequences, especially if they choose to drive in their intoxicated state. While dram shop law...
Harris County Drunk Driving Chronicle
Texas continues to be infamous for leading the country in drunk driving fatalities. Partly due to its size, but also due to a high rate of drunk driving, Harris County (primarily Houston) contributes more to that dubious distinction than any other jurisdiction in the state. In an ideal world, we would be able to analyze,...
Why Are People Defending Clerk in Fatal Atascocita Crash?
Don't sell alcohol to minors. Could there be a less controversial law? Apparently, for some internet pundits prohibitions against selling alcohol to minors is a little more nuanced that most of us think it is. Allow me a moment to explain what happened. July 25th, a car allegedly driven by the allegedly intoxicated Jagger Smith,...
For DUI Victims, Crowdfunding Is Good But Dram Shop Law is Better.
These days news stories involving death or injury often end with a link to GoFundMe, a website designed for the Internet at large to participate in "crowdfunding." Crowdfunding is the practice of soliciting small donations from a very wide pool of donors toward a particular financial goal. This practice has a wide variety of applications,...
Is There A Better Argument for Dram Shop Law Than a Fatal Crash With a Drunk Bartender?
Anyone who has spent time sitting at a bar may have seen its tender have a few drinks. Sometimes it's just a beer over the course of a shift, and other times she takes a few shots in a row with a group of regulars. Most bartenders know and maintain their limits like professionals (if...
Only In Houston: Two DUI Drivers Hit Disabled Car in Fatal Crashes
I've mentioned before that Houston ranks uncomfortably highly in matters of drunk driving. Not only does it have the most DUI-related deaths of any Texas city, but it consistently ranks in the top 5 cities throughout the entire U.S. Sometimes it seems like Houston actually wants to remind everybody who wears that tarnished crown in...
Texas DUI Crashes Don’t Just Happen In the Late Hours and On Weekends.
Some people may think that fatal DUI accidents only occur during the times of day when people are most likely to be at a bar--late evening through early morning, after one work day ends and before the next begins. It's true that drunken collisions notably increase during this period, but it's worth remembering that almost...
How Do We Know that Most Wrong Way Drivers Are Drunk?
When we heard that two men were killed in a wrong-way collision shortly after midnight, New Year's Day, on I-35, near Wheatland Road, folks around the office wondered aloud whether or not alcohol or drugs may have played a role in the fatal accident. I don't want to discuss that in-depth, because the reporting about...
Did Horace Shaw III Have an Accomplice in His Deadly Drunk Driving Crash?
People around Dallas are understandably shocked in the aftermath of a drunk driving accident that occurred around 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, December 13, 2017. For those who haven't heard, authorities charged off-duty Dallas firefighter, Horace Shaw III, with intoxication manslaughter. They allege that an intoxicated Mr. Shaw drove into a Mazda SUV, driven by 18-year-old Alyssa...
“Drinking then Driving” Isn’t the Same as Drunk Driving.
Time and again, I've talked about how dangerous drivers can be when they've had too much to drink. To make matters worse, some bars and restaurants are willing to help them reach that perilous state, ignoring dram shop laws. It's an insidious problem and it seems to get worse every year. Of course we'd never...
DUI or Don’t We: Drunk Driving in Amarillo is Worse than You Think
A recent drunk driving accident in Amarillo caught my attention and led me to research the relevant accident statistics for the area. As it turns out, Amarillo packs something even more alarming than hubcap-size steaks: an inordinate number of drunk-driving crashes given its overall population. The Accident That Prompted Me to Look Into The Numbers...
There Are More Daytime Drunk Drivers Than We Realized.
It's widely understood that the hours of midnight to 4 a.m. are a risky time to be on the road. It's not a baseless assumption; in Texas, our roads see an unfortunate number of drunk drivers taking to the streets around the time of last call. Indeed, this phenomenon is so well appreciated that most...
Texans Fighting Wrong-Way Driving With Smarter Signs
One such set of lines is the ones that divide the lanes of the road. Motor vehicles are obviously extremely dangerous, especially when operated incorrectly. The law does what it can to make sure people more or less understand this fact and keep it in mind when operating a vehicle, but drivers still make bad...
Fellowship of the Drink: The Expensive Travels of the TABC
Recent audits of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC), the state regulatory agency that monitors the distribution and service of alcohol in the Lone Star State, have shown that some of the agency's top brass have been boozing and schmoozing with the liquor industry, paid for by the very industry they are meant to oversee...
Who Pays When a Drunk Driver Hits a Pedestrian?
I realize that we have touched on this topic many times before, but there are still many people who believe that liquor liability, or dram shop, laws unfairly punish bars for the behavior of drunk drivers. The common perception is that a person goes out, decides to drink too much, hurts themselves, and then turns...
Austin PD Miss The Point By Blaming Reflectors Instead of Drunk Driver
For all their purported benefits to the environment and individual health, bicycles retain something of a bad rap as a means of transportation. Some of that may stem from their slightly-ambiguous status as a vehicle (should they stay on the sidewalk? Should they be in the road? In places without bike lanes, how much of...
