Dram Shop Laws in Maryland

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Greenberg & Bederman

The 800 block of West Diamond Avenue in Gaithersburg, Maryland isn’t a “block” in the traditional sense. It is an enormous shopping complex containing multiple businesses. This shopping center is bordered by I-270 to the east and Quince Orchard Road to the west. Running through the middle of all of this is a street called Bureau Drive. In other words, this section of Gaithersburg is surrounded by highways and busy, multiple lane roads. It isn’t a very hospitable environment for pedestrians. There aren’t many bus stops around. There is a MARC station nearby, but that doesn’t make for flexible transportation options. If you want to get to this place, your best bet is to drive.

In the southern corner of the lot is a business called Dogfish Head Alehouse. As you can guess by the name, this is an establishment that serves beer, wine and liquor in addition to food. So the question that we have is this: How much sense does it make to put a business that both serves alcohol and provides a place to drink it in the middle of a parking lot stuck between major roads?

 

It’s actually a question we have for a lot of bars and restaurants these days. Drive down any major road, or take any exit off of the beltway, and you will see a place where you can buy and drink alcohol where practically the only way in or out is to drive a car. If the Washington, D.C. area is committed to ending drinking and driving, our zoning boards have a strange way of showing it.

We aren’t suggesting that everyone who goes to these places gets drunk and then drives home. But one of the reasons that we focused on Dogfish Head Alehouse is because of a particularly egregious drinking and driving accident that  happened there in 2008.

A man named Michael Eaton went to the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Gaithersburg, which is in the middle of a parking lot and surrounded by a series of major roads. Mr. Eaton went to the bar and started drinking, and he didn’t stop for hours. By the end of the night, he had consumed 17 beers and three shots of hard liquor. In other words, he was extremely drunk.

There was absolutely no way on earth that the bartenders who provided him with all of that alcohol can claim that they didn’t know that Mr. Eaton was drunk. They work in a bar. They know what even three drinks can do, much less 17 beers and three shots of liquor. They were also perfectly aware of the local geography. Mr. Eaton couldn’t have left the place and gotten on the subway. He couldn’t have stepped out onto the street corner to hail a cab. His only options were to call a cab himself (which he didn’t do,) call a friend for a ride (which he didn’t do,) or to walk home.

He didn’t do any of those things. He walked out to his car, which was in the middle of the parking lot, and drove home. And the bartenders who served him 17 beers and 3 shots over the course of an evening simply let him.

The consequences of this inaction by Dogfish Head Alehouse were tragic. Mr. Eaton slammed into a minivan carrying Jazemin Waar and her family while they were both traveling down I-270. Ms. Waar did not survive, and Mr. Eaton is currently serving 8 years in prison.

So what punishment did the establishment receive? The bar that provided Mr. Eaton with enough alcohol to put him well over the legal limit for alcohol consumption and then sent him out to the parking lot? Well, nothing much really happened to them.

There are no laws establishing liability for bars and restaurants that over-serve their customers in Maryland, even if the bar is located in the middle of a parking lot with no public transportation in sight. This means that whatever happens after their customers leave the premises is of no importance to them whatsoever. This is why you have happy hours that last four hours, or “dollar shooter” nights, or any of the other countless promotions that are designed to get people to drink more. There are no consequences for the owners.

We believe that this is wrong, and it is why we are currently representing the family of Jazemin Waar in Maryland’s courts. We believe that her case is the clearest example of why Maryland needs so-called “dram shop laws.” It is our hope that this case will begin the process of establishing dram shop laws in Maryland, as it is in place in other states.

As car accident injury lawyers in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia, we have seen more than our share of people getting hurt in easily preventable car accidents, and unfortunately, alcohol was a factor in some of them. While dram shop laws won’t stop drinking and driving, they would certainly make it harder to accomplish. If bars realize that there could be financial consequences for the reckless behavior of their customers, they might take a few minutes and call that patron a cab, or not serve him that fourth drink. And as a result, we might see fewer cases like Jazemin Waar’s death in Maryland. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would certainly be better than this.

Greenberg and Bederman is a car accident injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. who has been hurt due to the recklessness of another driver. If you or a loved one has been in a car accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free accident case evaluation.
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Medical Malpractice and The Flat Earth Society

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Greenberg & Bederman

Did you know that there is a group called the Flat Earth Society? We’re serious. They exist. They are a group who sincerely believe that the planet on which we dwell is as flat as a pancake. They believe this despite hundreds of years of evidence to the contrary. They believe this despite photographic evidence, the laws of physics, latitude and longitude and all the other facts that verify with all the certainty in the world that the world is in fact round.

 

Don’t bother trying to convince them otherwise. They believe that all the evidence is fake. They believe that the credentials of all of these so-called “experts” and “scientists” are overstated, and that this belief is just part of a big money making conspiracy. (We aren’t sure who would profit by making people believe the earth is round, or how they would profit, but this is the belief.) They also always manage to find the one guy with a science degree who actually agrees with them, and they trot him out as their expert.

As crazy as the Flat Earth Society sounds, there are actually a great many corporations who have found their example to be purely inspirational. Tobacco companies, for instance, were denying for decades the harmfulness of its products. They claimed nicotine was not addictive and that smoking was only a habit, and further claimed that it wasn’t really that bad for you. And they always asked questions like these: “Who are these so-called ‘experts’ who were linking tobacco to lung cancer? What is their real agenda? How can we trust them? But in the meantime, here is a scientist that we found who disputes everything all the other scientists say about nicotine. So the facts are still out on the so-called ‘harmfulness’ of tobacco.

 

The business lobbying titan that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also engages in Flat Earth behavior, particularly when the subject is climate change. Their official position is that 99% of climatologists and researchers are either wrong or simply making it up when they claim that our planet is getting warmer due to carbon emissions. And they are pleased to present you with a list of the dozen or so scientists who don’t believe in global warming.

The major difference between the Flat Earth Society and the tobacco and manufacturing companies is that the Flat Earth Society actually believes in what they are saying whereas big tobacco and the Chamber of Commerce are simply pretending to believe. They know that tobacco is dangerous, and they do know that global warming exists. They are doing the Flat Earth routine because the alternative is more regulations on their industries, and regulations cost money.

Here’s the Flat Earth method: Deny. Deny again. Dispute the evidence, and then the providers of that evidence. Question the motives of the people who provide the evidence. Find someone willing to present your evidence, no matter how flimsy. Claim that the question is still in doubt because of this flimsy evidence. Repeat as often as necessary.

Medical malpractice insurance companies use the Flat Earth method as well. Their premise is that the United States court system is simply overrun with frivolous medical malpractice suits. Anybody who walks into the hospital can go to the courthouse and sue an honest doctor for millions of dollars. Why, there must be hundreds of thousands of frivolous medical malpractice cases going on at this very moment. And here are some of our experts to prove it.

Of course, none of this is true. All you have to do is look at the actual numbers, all of which are easily available.  Nobody is getting rich off of medical malpractice suits, and there aren’t hundreds of thousands of them, whether they are viewed as “frivolous” or not. And considering the expense of putting a medical malpractice case through court, an attorney would have to be willing to throw money away to attempt to try a case with no merit.

But never mind the facts, say the malpractice insurance companies. The earth is flat. Those numbers are stilted and fake. The real numbers (our numbers) are skyrocketing. All the cases are frivolous. Won’t someone in the government step in and help us?

Aside from merely pretending to believe what the Flat Earth Society actually does believe, another key difference is that medical malpractice insurance companies are able to get others to believe them as well. Hundreds of state and federal legislators believe, despite all the evidence and numbers to the contrary, that there is a medical malpractice crisis that needs to be regulated. There are now incredibly restrictive laws that favor the insurance companies rather than the injured patient in almost every state in America.  Sadly, none of this will come out until the victims stories are told one by one.

Fortunately, Maryland, D.C. and Virginia are not under the draconian restrictions that exist in Texas. There are some obstacles here, such as caps on pain and suffering, but fortunately they are relatively minor compared to Texas. As experienced medical malpractice lawyers, we are well versed in the obstacles that have been placed in the way of the injured. But bear in mind that the Flat Earth mindset is working for medical malpractice insurance companies. It can work in the state houses in Richmond and Annapolis and it can certainly work on Capitol Hill. We would urge you to contact your state or federal representative and remind them that despite what they might have heard, the earth is still round.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington DC Metropolitan area-based medical malpractice firm. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone in the Washington, D.C. area who has been injured due to the negligence of a doctor or other medical professional. If you or a loved one has been a victim of medical malpractice in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

 
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Dram Shop Laws Are Needed in Maryland

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Greenberg & Bederman

 

There is usually a great deal of talk from both sides of the political spectrum about a phenomenon called “judicial activism.” This phenomenon is also called “legislating from the bench.” It’s usually spoken about with derision.

Essentially, what this means is when a state or federal court makes a ruling that either negates or enhances existing laws. It also applies when a court rules in such a way that the ruling has consequences that affect many more people than those involved in the case before the court. Whether this is considered a good thing or a bad thing generally depends on who you ask and when you ask them. Democrats and liberals, for instance, would argue that the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling (which allows unlimited and anonymous spending on political advertisements from anyone who wants to spend the money) was judicial activism, primarily because most of them vehemently oppose unlimited money in politics. On the other side of the coin, many conservatives and Republicans would argue that a case like Griswold v Connecticut was judicial activism, because the ruling turned what was supposed to be a case on the legality of birth control into a broader ruling on the right to privacy. We hope this doesn’t sound too cynical, but it seems to us that in many cases, “judicial activism” is political shorthand for “judges that did not rule the way we wanted them to.”

 

The general argument would seem to be “Wait a minute, how is it that this ruling is now a law? Aren’t the legislatures supposed to create law? I didn’t vote for this. Nobody I voted for had anything to do with creating or passing this law.”

But sometimes, this is exactly the point of having a judicial system. As the saying goes, “What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.” State legislatures or even the federal government can pass and have passed laws that don’t always line up with the Constitution. For example, let’s say that Baltimore passes a city ordinance that states that everyone who attends a Ravens game has to wear the color purple or face a fifty dollar fine. This might be a particularly popular law in Baltimore, but there is no conceivable way that any court in the land would allow that ruling to remain in place. Our judicial system acts as a check to make sure that legislatures do not overstep their bounds, and sometimes that pleases Americans and sometimes that makes them angry, but at the end of the day we believe that a strong Judiciary is an absolute necessity for a functioning democracy.

We are bringing this up not to give you a civics lesson, but because the concept of “activist judges” and “judicial activism” has been on our minds lately. We are currently addressing a case that we hope will establish laws in Maryland that currently do not exist in our state, even though similar laws are established on the books of many other states in America. These are called “Dram Shop Laws.”

In a nutshell, dram shop laws exist to make sure that alcohol is sold in a responsible manner. It is no secret that people can do reckless and stupid things when they are drunk. They get into fistfights, they pass out in public, and they often drink and drive. While you can’t prevent people from consuming alcohol (nor would we want to,) you can hold businesses that sell alcohol accountable if they are selling alcohol to people who are already visibly intoxicated. Many states do just that. If it can be proven that a bar not only allowed but also encouraged a patron to become drunk, and that patron drives off and causes a serious car accident, that bar can be held liable for the damages. These laws aren’t on the books in Maryland, but we think they should be.

We are currently representing a family that lost a granddaughter due to a drunk driver. While this is a sadly common occurrence, what makes this case relatively unique is that the driver got visibly drunk at one bar over the course of an evening. One establishment served him beer after beer and shot after shot and simply let him leave.

As we mentioned, Maryland has no real dram shop laws on the books. There is nothing in Maryland’s legal code that could hold this bar even possibly responsible. We took this case because we believe that we can change that. We believe that a state court can and should rule that the victims of the irresponsibility of a business can hold that business accountable. It isn’t a law that would be made up out of whole cloth. There are examples of these laws on the books in several other states. And since there isn’t any sign of legislation about this issue moving forward in the Maryland state legislature, we believe that the only realistic avenue that is available to us is through the court system.  

We have no doubt that there are some who would call this “judicial activism,” or “legislating from the bench” or “judicial overreach,” most likely the alcohol and restaurant lobbies. But we believe that there is nothing overreaching about establishing protections for victims and liability for businesses when equivalent laws already exist in other states. All Maryland would be doing is catching up to the other states who have taken a more responsible view as to how establishments could conduct themselves.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the negligent and irresponsible actions of drunk drivers. We can help injury victims in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

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