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DUIIs lead to bartender education effort By JULIE SWENSEN Maxy's bartender Barbara Long sees it time and time again -- visibly intoxicated people who don't get why she's cutting them off from another drink. Patrons think they can be served as much alcohol as they want if they're not driving home; they're unaware of the state law that bartenders can't serve a visibly intoxicated person, period. After a server cuts a person off from alcohol, the server also must make a good faith effort to remove the person's drink. "I can't tell you how many times someone has told me `No, you're making this up,"' Long said. Long and other local bartenders met with police and Oregon Liquor Control Commission officials last week to learn more about the law and the penalties for violating it. Bartenders were given signs that explain the law to post for disbelieving patrons, and lesson in liability if they serve a visibly intoxicated person who later causes damage. (The server and/or licensee is responsible). The meeting was spurred by a rising number of DUII arrests in Jackson County with high blood alcohol levels. Talking to bar owners and managers is a big part of the solution, said Sandy DePiero, Jackson County traffic safety project coordinator. Drunken drivers have killed 147 people in the county in the past decade, DePiero added. Police told the group that if there's intervention when a person becomes visibly intoxicated, it may prevent a traffic crash from occurring. To drive home the importance of cutting people off from drinks, bar employees were encouraged to watch a graphic film of drunken driving crashes, and were told of bars that were sued after serving a person who later killed someone while driving drunk. OLCC regional manager Brian Schmitz talked of a lawsuit involving a bartender who served a man 10 shots in two hours; the bartender said the man didn't show signs of being intoxicated. But the jury didn't care about the signs -- they just cared the man ran over a little girl, Schmitz said. The jury's award exceeded $1 million. "Don't wait for them to start showing those signs," Schmitz told them. If you hesitate at all in deciding whether to serve someone a drink, don't serve the drink, the group heard. If an employee serves a visibly intoxicated person, a bar can get a $650 fine or a 10-day alcohol license suspension. Fines and the suspension length go up for the second and third offense; a fourth offense nets a license cancellation. Bars that admit the violation and have a good compliance history can get a reduced penalty for the first two offenses. To help reduce violations, OLCC inspector Janet Ouellette said bar owners need to support employees' decisions to cut someone off, and ensure there's communication during shift changes about patrons who've been there all day. Servers must make a good faith effort to remove a drink from cut-off patrons, and they must watch to make sure the cut-off patrons don't get drinks from someone else, Ouellette said. She recommended that staff record such incidents in a log. New employees should take server education and be closely watched, and a server's top duty should be to not serve visibly intoxicated people, Ouellette said. She encouraged owners and managers to drop in unexpectedly to make sure staff are following the law. The liability issue has caused Long to consider leaving her job as a bartender. There's that stress of not catching one person who's visibly intoxicated out of a crowd of maybe a couple hundred customers. "It just gets scarier and scarier every day," Long said. She thought the meeting was beneficial, as it gave her more tools to do her job. A co-worker of hers, Susan Horsley, said she's left the business three times because of the stress of being sued if she makes a mistake. "If there were more responsible servers out there, some of this wouldn't be happening," Horsley said of drunken driving fatalities. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA