02-27-2013, 01:24 PM
If you're a bartender and you knowingly let a patron drive home drunk, you leave yourself and the bar owner open to being sued if the patron injures/kills himself or someone else on the road. It happens. The litigant may well fail in attempting to sue the bartender or owner depending on the local laws and circumstances, but it's still time/cost in court, bad for reputation, etc...
There are policies and courses of action for how to handle these situations at bars, at least the ones where my friends tend and where I've occasionally bar-backed over the last 15 years. In the case of the OP, it's possible that the bartender didn't follow those policies and/or use common sense and make reasonable attempts to stop the regular from getting behind the wheel before calling the cops. However, if there were no policies in place and the bartender tried everything within her power to stop the regular from getting behind the wheel, I don't think the firing is justified and the BT may have saved lives and/or protected herself and the bar from litigation. There aren't a lot of background facts in the OP article.
P.s. I'm not minimizing the dangers of driving drunk, it's obviously a serious problem. 40,000 people a year die in car accidents as a result of drunk drivers.
There are policies and courses of action for how to handle these situations at bars, at least the ones where my friends tend and where I've occasionally bar-backed over the last 15 years. In the case of the OP, it's possible that the bartender didn't follow those policies and/or use common sense and make reasonable attempts to stop the regular from getting behind the wheel before calling the cops. However, if there were no policies in place and the bartender tried everything within her power to stop the regular from getting behind the wheel, I don't think the firing is justified and the BT may have saved lives and/or protected herself and the bar from litigation. There aren't a lot of background facts in the OP article.
P.s. I'm not minimizing the dangers of driving drunk, it's obviously a serious problem. 40,000 people a year die in car accidents as a result of drunk drivers.