Intoxication Leads to Severe and Significant Brain Injury
The Dram Shop Act makes the entity that sells or furnishes alcoholic beverages and who knowingly serves a person habitually addicted to the use of any or all alcoholic beverages liable for injury or damage caused by or resulting from the intoxication of such person.
The evidence in this case clearly shows that the establishment, by and through its bartender, knowingly served a person habitually addicted to alcohol in that it:
1) Knew that he was patronizing the establishment on virtually a daily basis;
2) Knew that he consumed multiple drinks or excessive amounts of alcohol;
3) Knew that he regularly became intoxicated while patronizing the establishment;
4) Knowledge was expressed by employees of the establishment regarding the Plaintiff being a drunk.
As on many prior days, when the victim in this case arrived at the bar located in a local hotel, he had consumed 12 to 15 beers before he got there. On this particular date, he arrived on a waverunner with his friend sitting on the back. The testimony from witnesses is that on that day, the victim was drinking Bloody Marys and consumed a minimum of five drinks in a very short time span (no more than one and one half hours). The witnesses testified that he was intoxicated as he was very loud, boisterous, argumentative, and that he and his friend were coming out of the bar very slowly and “almost leaning on one another”.
In spite of this, the bartender at the establishment not only continued to serve this gentleman, but rather offered him a drink “to go” in a plastic cup as he was leaving. This was witnessed by numerous patrons in the bar. The victim left the bar with his “to go” drink and after having consumed that as well as numerous other alcoholic beverages in the course of the short time period he was there, and coming under the influence of alcohol and being intoxicated, got on to his waverunner with a passenger on the back, and proceeded to drive through the canal paralleling Southern Boulevard near the airport and crashed his waverunner into an anchored pontoon boat located in the canal. He sustained a very serious head injury and the passenger on his waverunner was also injured.
As a result of this accident, the victim sustained a severe and significant brain injury. He was unconscious following this incident and was rushed to St. Mary’s Hospital by Trauma Hawk. He was assessed in the trauma unit and emergency surgery was performed by a local neurosurgeon. The operative procedures performed were a left frontotemporal parietal occipital craniotomy, elevation and debridement of opened depressed skull fractures, and complex reconstruction of depressed skull fractures with titanium plating system. Seven plates and twenty-eight screws were used in the reconstruction of the depressed skull fracture.
Continue reading " Intoxication Leads to Severe and Significant Brain Injury " »
