Every restaurant and hotel in California is repeatedly warned by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (still known to many as the ABC Board), by food and wine attorneys, and by hotel and restaurant attorneys about how dangerous it is to your reputation, income, and obligation to serve alcohol or liquor to a minor. Awareness of this danger has recently loomed large in the minds of hotel and restaurant owners in the Coachella Valley cities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, La Quinta, Indio, Coachella and Cathedral City.
But the lesson learned in the Coachella Valley also holds true for restaurants and hotels in Long Beach, San Diego, Orange County, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Orange, Costa Mesa, Carlsbad, Santa Monica, Newport Beach, Buena Park. . , the Inland Empire area of Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside and Temecula and also up the coast to Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.
In August, two Coachella Valley restaurants, one in Rancho Mirage and one in La Quinta, had their liquor licenses suspended for 30 days after serving alcoholic beverages to minors. Both restaurants chose to close and use the time to remodel.
It’s bad enough if the Beverage and Alcohol Control Board catches a restaurant serving alcohol to a minor, but what’s unusual in these two cases is how the restaurants got caught and sad what happened to minors.
In the case of the Rancho Mirage restaurant, the minor died in a car accident. In the La Quinta incident, the minor jumped to his death from a pickup truck.
It gets even worse. In the Rancho Mirage restaurant case, the minor was riding in a car with a friend who had also been drinking but was not a minor. Both were killed when their vehicle hit a curb and overturned. They had both been drinking in the restaurant. The older of the two had a blood alcohol reading of 0.23. The minor had a blood alcohol reading of 0.12. The legal limit in California is 0.08.
In the La Quinta restaurant incident, the 19-year-old minor dined with his girlfriend, the driver of the vehicle, a 22-year-old male, the driver’s wife, and their two-year-old son.
At some point, the driver of the van reportedly hit his wife. The minor then threatened to jump out of the vehicle if the driver continued to fight with his wife. The minor kept his promise while the truck was driving between 30 and 40 miles per hour.
The La Quinta restaurant was also hit with a two-year probationary period, which if violated, could lead to the revocation of its liquor license.
This litany of events does not even consider the number of civil lawsuits that may be brought as a result of these two incidents, the grievance of the families of those who died, or the losses that the two restaurants can expect to suffer as a result of the lack of service. of your employees
When a restaurant or hotel serves an adult, in California there is generally no liability if that adult is later involved in a drunk driving accident. There are no actions taken by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Not so when the restaurant or hotel serves alcohol to an intoxicated minor. So all bets are off.