It's not the bar's fault that the guy decided to drive drunk and kill himself. Sure, maybe they overserved him, and deserve a fine for that. The guy could have just as easily had 6 shots and killed himself driving home drunk.
Put away your pitchforks.
I don't think the pitchforks and tar & feathers are out yet regarding this subject, but you're totally correct, JC, regarding the guys decision to drive drunk being his alone and not the bar's. However, it was the bar that gave him an average of 1 drink every 15 minutes for 4 hours. Even if 17 different bartenders only served him one shot each they would still know exactly how many he had already been served and for how long when they entered each order into the computer. Surely one of those 17 bartenders would have noticed the amount and thought to question it since it was highly likely that the customer had reached or passed the point of rational judgement and decision making. Many of us have been there and (don't) know what that point feels like. Now...if one of those 17 bartenders HAD questioned it but were rebuffed by their superiors when doing so...that should be the nail in the coffin of the entire WWC enterprise, and it wouldn't surprise me if that's the tactic used by the lawyer of the victims wife and six kids. But I'd like to hear what Mrs JC has to say, from what she knows as the law, from her training and from her own experience. No sarcasm implied there. She knows her stuff and I would value her knowledge.
For those who aren't local or might have forgotten (and this might change the way you view this):
Although this might come down to a moral or ethical decision made by a single person (patron or server as you see it), this location of WWC has had problems adhering to the law in the past.
In 2004, they allowed 10 underage people to be served alcohol. One of those served went on to wreck his car and kill himself afterward. Yes, other bars have likely been found in violation of the underage issue, but other regional WWC locations have been cited for this, too (Savannah, 2006+; multiple violations). I have not searched for other examples from this WWC location.
Look here (NC Gvt site) and notice that the only 10 day/$1000 fines listed in the first 50 all are for drinking while serving. Wow. 7 day/$700 fine on a charge of "Selling alcoholic drinks at a price that is different from the usual price for less than an entire business day or to a segment of the population". Wow. The lowest underage drinking drinking fine levied as per this link is 12 day/$1200 (and most are 20/$2000+). Wow. This assumes that these fines from May 2017 are structured the same as the fine being implemented in the case of point (which occurred 9/2017), and, obviously, I didn't see any fines for serving a customer who then got in a car and killed himself, so I don't know if that even exists. What it implies though, is that overserving falls between price gouging and underage drinking on the severity/penalty scale.
I can appreciate that "over serving" is a thing that cannot be laid down by law as it is now. Al can drink way more than Eric F, so it falls on the server to make judgement. Problem here, the way I see it, is that there was a monumental failure of judgement somewhere that night. Hell, maybe it was the engineer who designed the sadly popular "Suicide Leap", the spot where the deceased drove off of the 485 ramp and fell onto traffic below, that sees more than its share of jumpers. How do we fix this?
