I have worked for retailers either as a corporate manager or a consultant for over twenty years. Retailers who sell/sold alcohol in dozens of states and half a dozen countries.
Regulations vary but generally if a retailer is selling to an end consumer, they are responsible for everything that happens in between. I have had liquor delivered from a liquor store. The guy who delivered it was an employee of the store. If he didn’t check my ID, the store is fucked just as much as if he didn’t check it at the checkout in the store.
If you “partner” with a company that can “hire” any dodgy person off the internet to make deliveries and the deliberately not supervise them so that they don’t become “employees” you can’t lay off your responsibility on them. You are the licensed retailer, you have the responsibility.
If you sold the alcohol to DoorDash or to another intermediary, and they sold it on to the customer, then you are acting as a wholesaler/distributor and would have a different set of responsibilities (and licenses). And DoorDash would be the retailer.
The actual physical movement of goods and the actions of humans involved are exactly the same as they were 60 years ago, when I could call a liquor store and have them deliver a case or a jug on account or COD.
Technology makes the order placement process easier, and it enables the parties involved to loosen their relationship to each other, which is a bug, not a feature.
DoorDash and/or the delivery driver are acting as agents of the liquor store, where the buck stops, literally and figuratively. End of.
That may be the case, but it still seems to me that Doordash breached its responsibility to the store to ensure that the alcohol was delivered to a person lawfully permitted to receive it (especially since the driver shouldn’t have even been working for them on a suspended license), and IANAL but it seems to me that they should have grounds to sue Doordash for the cost of the fine and the damage to their business and reputation. Right now, it sounds like the liquor board is content to fine the store and the driver but let Doordash slide.
So far as I can tell, the liquor store sold the alcohol to a legal adult. That should be the end of it, as far as they’re concerned, but they decided to do the right thing anyway, and took reasonable measures to ensure that legal adult wouldn’t hand it off to a minor afterwards. Surely, the one who broke the law was the person who actually handed over alcohol to a minor.
I was busted during the Christmas rush of 1988. They sent a deputy who looked at least 25YO to all the liquor stores in central Connecticut. I was not convicted because it was a sting, but it really sucked (I was in college and working part-time). I understand the card-everyone standards. I’m 56 and got carded the other day.
The policy of the WSLCB* has long been to hold the business (and the individual, if identifiable) who made the sale responsible for infractions. So their action in this case, while illogical, is at least consistent.
I worked at LCB — Licensing IT, not Enforcement — for a couple of years prior to retiring, and from what I absorbed of the culture, the whole concept of liquor delivery must have knocked them on their collective asses. If the state had still been in the retail business I imagine they would have gone to something along the lines of a “pick up at the door” model like many restaurants, but Initiative 1183 in 2011 took that off the table.
* Formerly the Washington State Liquor Control Board, now the Liquor & Cannabis Board.
It’s also worth noting that the LCB isn’t all too popular here right now, after back in February they decided to raid a bunch of gay bars in Seattle and fine customers for “lewd conduct” (I.e. male patrons with no shirts on or wearing jockstraps) as if this were 1969 New York. This was especially baffling to many people as public nudity is legal in Seattle and you can walk down the street in your birthday suit with absolutely no problem as long as you’re not behaving in an obscene manner.
In that case, the liquor board quickly backed down and announced they’d no longer be enforcing those rules.
No, no, no. They did not. The end customer is the buyer, not the delivery person.
If you want to be a wholesaler, get licensed as a wholesaler. Let the DoorDash “independent contractor” get licensed as a retailer. Then you’re cool. That’s not what’s happening here, title to the goods never passes to either DoorDash or their gig worker. They are agents of the retailer. Since DoorDash is a faceless corporation without any nexus in King County, the other two players are the easy targets.
The retailer wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to sell to people in remote locations, but disclaim responsibility for everything that happens between their store and the customer.
Isn’t Doordash doing the same thing? They’re perfectly happy to take a cut of the sale from the merchant and charge fees to the customer for the delivery, but they don’t want to shoulder any of the responsibility for hiring a driver with a suspended license who delivered the alcohol to the underage person nor for brokering the sale in the first place.
This is what’s probably driving the LCB up the wall about liquor delivery, because the chain of custody can get thoroughly muddied. So it’s understandable (though aggravating) that they’d revert to the default position and blame the retailer.
At the risk of sounding like I’m defending the LCB — they can be pretty damn indefensible at times, and there are more than a few Rambo wannabes in Enforcement — the gay bar raids just don’t sound like something the Board would prioritize. It may be that they got dragged in because licensed establishments were involved; on the other hand, it’s been six years since I was there, and somebody at the top may have decided that they needed to make a “statement.” In any case, at least they had the (relatively) good sense to back off.
I mean, the last time I had Walgreens deliver my prescriptions, they did have a Doordash driver make the delivery. I was quite confused when I got a phone call at work from a Doordash driver who said he was here with my delivery and I wasn’t answering the door. None of my prescriptions are controlled substances, though, so I don’t know if they’d dispense Percocet that way, but I wouldn’t put it past Doordash to tell Walgreens they could handle the regulatory requirements.
That’s a good question.
No disagreements there, but the fact of the matter is that for many businesses gig delivery has now become an essential part of the business model, and the law has failed to keep up.
Apparently there had been some recent complaints and they had to act on them. They certainly seemed like they didn’t want to be there and were happy to get called off.
Yep, we get training for all of that. I agree that stings are run the same way here. I could wax poetic about how ridiculous the training is, and how much they expect out of people who don’t make much money. I’ll refrain you lucky dogs.
We do our own delivery, so it would be on us. A lot of liquor law expectations are unfair, and often unrealistc, though I totally agree that alcohol should not be sold to minors or drunks. Answers? I got nothin’.
The OP certainly is unfair.
They shouldn’t be serving alcohol then, which is literally what they are doing.
It’s effectively the same as a waiter serving alcohol to a minor and the bartender is the one who is held responsible despite having no interaction with the customer.
DoorDash should not be legally allowed to deliver alcohol. The law is bad. Bad laws have to be changed.
ISTM that if the retailer had a policy of carding delivery drivers before releasing the merchandise, they’d have been in a position to have avoided the issue (in this particular instance), because sellers aren’t supposed to hand over alcohol unless presented with a valid license.
Kinda gobsmacked by the idea that it’s NOT a requirement.
Missouri high court clears the way for a woman’s release after 43 years in prison
The Missouri Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for a Missouri woman whose murder conviction was overturned to be freed after 43 years in prison.
A circuit court judge ruled last month that Sandra Hemme’s attorneys showed evidence of her “actual innocence,” and an appeals court ruled she should be freed while her case is reviewed.
But Hemme’s immediate freedom has been complicated by lengthy sentences she received for crimes she committed while behind bars — a total of 12 years, which were piled on top of the life sentence she received for her murder conviction.
