The legal duty of care required of Texas alcohol-serving venues

Our Clear Lake, TX injury lawyers emphasize that under Texas “dram shop” laws, the core duties of alcohol-serving establishments (called “dram shops”) are:

• To avoid serving patrons past the .08 Blood Alcohol Content limit, and
• To prevent any patrons judged to be drunk from driving.

In the effort to prevent drunken driving accidents, Texas law provides some guidelines to help dram shops comply with their legal duties and to understand legal expectations regarding their conduct. Our Clear Lake, TX injury lawyers provide a list of some of the steps dram shops must follow in order to fully comply with their legal duties include the following:

• All servers employed by a dram shop must be licensed by the TABC (Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission). To be licensed, each server must complete extensive training in the signs of drunkenness and in duties towards patrons and the public. A licensed server cannot validly claim ignorance with regards to the signs of patron drunkenness or the dangers of allowing intoxicated patrons to drive.
• Dram shops must have procedures and policies in place to allow the establishment to determine how much alcohol any patron has been served at any time.
• The establishment must also have a set of guidelines that employees must know and follow in dealing with drunken patrons.
• Servers must also actively look for the signs that a patron is becoming too drunk to drive.

Clear Lake, TX injury lawyers point out that some alcohol-serving establishments set up additional safeguards to help them find a Safe Harbor Defense and avoid vicarious liability in case of a patron’s drunken driving accident. Some serve free non-alcoholic beverages to designated drivers that accompany drinking patrons. Some dram shops partner with local cab companies to drive patrons home who appear to have become too drunk to drive.

Such responsible establishments actively seek to avoid the potential threat of a lawsuit based on a drunken driving accident caused by a patron. Such a lawsuit can have a crippling impact not just on their reputation in the community, but also upon their finances.

When you’re the victim of an accident caused by a drunken driver, you might need to look to all liable parties, including the dram shop that served the drunken driver, in order to be able to obtain an adequate financial recovery to pay your medical expenses from the wreck. Learn your legal options for financial recovery. Contact the experienced Clear Lake, TX injury lawyers at Denena & Points for a free and confidential case evaluation/legal consultation.