Dram Shop Laws - Should We Have Them In Maryland?
Dram Shop Laws – Should We Have Them in Maryland, DC and Virginia?
Alcohol doesn’t grow on trees. Nor is it sold in vending machines or hawked at lemonade stands. In order to buy alcohol, you have to walk into a bar or liquor store that has been licensed to sell it by the state. This is how it is in every state of the union.
There is a good reason for this. Alcohol is an intoxicating beverage, as we’re sure all of you are well aware. In high enough doses, it can quite easily be fatal. It seems that every year more and more teenagers or fraternity pledges find this out the hard way. But even in less than fatal doses, alcohol still alters behavior and reflexes. People who have been drinking often behave in ways that would never occur to them when they are sober. And quite often, it isn’t just themselves they hurt. Drunk people get into fights, or people abuse their significant others, people pass out in public places, people think it’s a good idea to walk along the hand railing of a bridge, etc. etc.
In short, alcohol is not something that should be easily available. It should be as difficult as possible for those who are underage to get, and its sale should be forbidden to those who are already visibly intoxicated. Those who sell alcohol should be fully aware of the unpredictability of those who drink it, and they should further be expected to sell alcohol in a responsible manner, whether they are bartenders or liquor store clerks.
It is because of these expectations that most states have what are called dram shop laws. The idea behind these laws is that if a bartender or liquor store owner continues to serve or sell alcohol to someone who is visibly and obviously intoxicated, then that bartender or liquor store owner should have to shoulder some of the responsibility when that intoxicated person causes damage, pain and suffering to others.
However, there are two major problems with dram shop laws in the Maryland, Virginia and D.C. areas. The first problem is that they don’t exist in Maryland and Virginia, and the laws in D.C. only cover liquor stores and not bars. The second problem is that proving liability is extremely difficult. All it boils down to is that the person behind the counter at the D.C. liquor store can argue that the person who bought the 1.75 liter bottle of cheap vodka looked perfectly fine, and besides, how was he to know that this person would then drink half of it and then get behind the wheel of a car?
So essentially, a person anywhere in the Maryland, D.C. or Virginia can march into any bar that they want and drink themselves silly, all the while announcing loudly that they will be driving themselves home, and the bartender or bar owner bears no responsibility for any mayhem or accidents that happen later.
It seems that many liquor stores and bars in our area are legally free to place profits over responsibility, and they do so with regularity. If you walk into an average bar in College Park when the University of Maryland is in session, you will see all manner of drink specials dedicated to getting the student body as drunk as possible for as little money as possible. Similarly, if you walk into liquor stores near the campus, you will see enormous displays of cut rate beer like Black Label, Milwaukee’s Best and Pabst Blue Ribbon for sale in bulk. You can often see one or two students of age walking out with multiple cases. It is doubtful that these students are purchasing beer simply for themselves.
There is also the “alco-pop” phenomenon, where there are dozens of alcoholic beverages that are marketed based on the idea that you can barely taste the alcohol. Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Bacardi Breezers, and Smirnoff Ice all have between 4 and 7% alcohol by volume, and they are all perfectly marketed towards young women. On the more masculine side, they are also marketing alcoholic beverages that are essentially packaged the same way as “energy drinks” like Monster and Red Bull. Drinks like Sparks, Hooch, and Liquid Core are essentially indistinguishable from the non-alcoholic energy drinks in terms of packaging.
So essentially, in between the lack of local responsibility and the encouragement of beverage retailers and marketers, the D.C. area is a nice, safe place to get irresponsibly drunk. And the numbers of alcohol related accidents certainly bear that out.
In the District of Columbia (DC), for instance, there were 15 alcohol related driving fatalities in 2007. In Maryland, that same year brought 179 alcohol related driving deaths. And Virginia had 332 of them. That is not counting the additional injuries and property damage.
This is not surprising considering that there is, after all, no legal incentive for bartenders or liquor store owners to keep from selling as much booze as they can to whoever can legally buy it, regardless of what condition they are in. So people will continue to drink alcohol to excess, and will continue to get behind the wheels of their cars, and the liquor selling establishment will continue to make tons of money off of this ridiculous situation.
At Greenberg and Bederman, we have accepted as clients many residents of the D.C. area who have had their lives damaged irrevocably by those who have committed the irresponsible and criminal negligence act of drinking and driving. In the course of helping so many of these victims, we have come to the conclusion that the drinking culture in Washington, D.C. makes it entirely too easy for people to engage in reckless and irresponsible behavior. It is our belief that the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia and the City Council of Washington, D.C. need to seriously re-examine our dram shop laws. As of right now, there is essentially nothing keeping bar owners and liquor store owners from keeping drunk drivers off the streets except their own consciences, and that conscience is often drowned out by profitability.
If you or a loved one in the D.C. area has been injured due to a drunk driver, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.
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