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Sober Assessment: Alcohol After Josh Hancock
Steven A. Adelman
On April 28, 2007, the St. Louis
Cardinals played a day game against the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium.
Josh Hancock, a Cardinals reliever, pitched three innings in an 8-1
loss.
Several hours after the game, a group of about ten people went to
Mike Shannon's, a restaurant near the stadium. They arrived between 8:30
and 9:00 PM. Just before 11:00 that night, a
teammate paid for 27 drinks. At 12:01 AM, Josh Hancock paid for four
more, then got into his rented Ford Explorer and headed west on
Interstate 64. Just two days earlier, he had wrecked his own SUV leaving
a nightclub at 5:30 AM.
Josh Hancock knew not to drink
and drive. The Cardinals' manager, Tony LaRussa, had lectured the team
about alcohol several times, most recently after LaRussa himself was
arrested on a DUI charge during Spring Training.
Further west on I-64, a Geo
Prizm was cut off by another car near the Forest Park/Grand exit. The
Geo hit the center median and was disabled in the far left lane.
At 12:34 AM, a flatbed tow truck
parked behind the Geo. The driver put on the tow truck's yellow roof
lights and flashing red lights. He called the police. Then he began
loading the car onto his flatbed.
At 12:48 AM, Josh Hancock
approached the Forest Park/Grand exit on westbound I-64. He was talking
on his cell phone, making plans to meet a woman at a bar in Clayton,
about five miles away. He was driving 68 miles per hour in a 55 mph
zone.
After studying the tire imprints
on the pavement, accident reconstructionists determined that, although
Josh Hancock did not brake at all, he did swerve right at the last
moment before impact.
Josh Hancock died of a severe
head injury. The medical examiner found his blood alcohol concentration
to be 0.157, almost twice Missouri's limit of 0.8. A glass pipe and 8.55
grams of marijuana were found in the SUV, enough for a misdemeanor, but
toxicology results showed that he was not under the influence of
marijuana when he died.
A few days after the accident,
the St. Louis Cardinals banned alcohol from their clubhouse, bringing
the list of Major League Baseball teams that do not provide alcohol to
about a dozen. By contrast, the National Football League has sweeping
league-wide prohibitions on alcohol, and the National Collegiate
Athletic Association bans alcohol sales at sanctioned events.
All of this is interesting to
people who closely follow professional sports, which is why this
journeyman pitcher's death was so widely reported. But the debate about
alcohol in baseball clubhouses is both off-topic generally and
irrelevant to facility managers in particular. It is off-topic because
there is no evidence Josh Hancock drank at Busch Stadium that day. It is
irrelevant because MLB lets each franchise to make its own alcohol
policy, so whatever anyone else thinks, it is still each team's own
decision.
For people who see this as a
story about responsibility and judgment rather than sports, however,
Josh Hancock's death raises an important legal issue: the hidden costs
of alcohol sales.
Venues obviously sell alcohol
because patrons want to drink and alcohol sales are very profitable.
Crusades against the sale of alcohol run headlong into simple economics:
alcohol can be big money.
The dangers of alcohol are
equally well known. According to the latest data from the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 17,941 alcohol-related
traffic fatalities in 2006. Mothers Against Drunk Driving claims that
there are 1.4 million drunk driving arrests in the United States every
year.
From a legal standpoint, the
duty of public assembly facilities regarding alcohol sales is clear. In
order to behave like a "reasonable person in the same or similar
circumstances," which is what the law requires, facility managers should
periodically address the following questions:
-
How much is our alcohol
revenue?
-
What is the likelihood that an
alcohol-related injury will lead to a lawsuit against our building or
a vendor who we are contractually obligated to indemnify?
-
How costly would a reasonably
foreseeable verdict or settlement be?
After answering these questions,
you might calculate that the alcohol revenue is greater than the cost of
paying a damages award. The law does not require one answer versus
another, only that you make a reasonable decision based on reasonably
available information.
Assuming you decide to continue
selling alcohol, the next step in the legal analysis is to ask if you
use enough of the alcohol revenue to make your facility as safe as
reasonably possible under the circumstances. Again, there is no one
right answer. The legal duty is to consider the alternatives and make
reasonable decisions.
Finally, once you have conducted
a reasonable risk assessment, you should record your decision-making
process. Lawyers thrive on paper, so keep copies of things that make you
look thorough and thoughtful. Unless you can produce meeting minutes or
a trail of emails documenting your deliberations, it is as if they never
happened.
If Josh Hancock's death proves
anything, it is that some lawyer will be willing to sue virtually anyone
about anything. A month after his son died, Noel Hancock sued the
restaurant, the tow company and its driver, and the driver of the
stalled car the tow truck operator was helping.
While there is time to determine
your true cost of serving alcohol, do it. Or a plaintiff's lawyer will
gladly do it for you. |
