I could see civil liability, but criminal? Seriously? I did not know the law worked quite this way, and it seems unfair. How can we as a society expect anyone to want to open a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol if they can be held criminally liable for what some dumbass high school employee does? How often does this happen?
ETA: Obviously I would feel differently if there were any evidence that Kalil had told his workers to look the other way so they could make money from underage sales. But this just sounds like it was pretty much random, out of the blue.
it sounds like a undercover sting op in the first place… I mean a cop was there when the beer was sold ?
but this happens a lot … all hell get is a fine and told to make sure his employees are more careful … the server wil lose his/her job and the restaurant’s insurance will go up and hell have a mark against his liquor license
Imagine the leader of an organized crime family and some members of his organization are smuggling cocaine across the Mexican border while he’s sitting in his home in New York. Would you say he has no criminal responsibility because he’s thousands of miles away from the crime scene?
If you’re the boss of the organization you’re responsible for what it does, including crimes. And that can include crimes that occurred just because you didn’t take reasonable precautions to prevent them.
You’re ignoring one part of my two part test. I said not only that you are thousands of miles away, but the crime is occurring “without your knowledge”. A crime boss knows his organization is smuggling drugs. Or if he genuinely doesn’t, like he just thinks they are importing olive oil and it is people underneath him who are doing all the drug stuff without his knowledge, then he shouldn’t be criminally liable.
And what reasonable precautions did Kalil not take? He’s supposed to vet each employee while he’s practicing for Sunday’s game across the country?
I feel, again, that this unnecessarily punishes people for absentee ownership of certain types of businesses. If you own a mom and pop restaurant and you’re in there all the time, great. But if you have capital from somewhere else and want to invest it in a little chain of restaurants, not so good. You’d better buy some car washes instead, or just buy stock in Pizza Hut. That doesn’t sit well with me.
If crime bosses can so easily be arrested just because some low level junkie was caught smuggling drugs then Hollywood really has lied to me over the years.
When you apply for a liquor license, you accept an affirmative duty to implement and maintain controls to prevent the illegal sale of alcohol. If you don’t want to accept that responsibility, don’t apply for a liquor license.
According to the article, the store’s manager had not taken the “required” alcohol license training. Sorry, but if you don’t have a properly qualified person to supervise the place, stop liquor sales until you get one.
If he doesn’t have time to perform the responsibilities he signed up for, he shouldn’t have signed up for them. At the very least, he should have hired someone to make sure the restaurant was being properly run. Conversely, if he didn’t show up for a football game because he was too busy working at the restaurant, his team probably would have fined or fired him, too.
And does Minnesota really allow 17-year olds to serve alcohol? (The story says a 19-year old was served alcohol by a 17-year old.) It sounds like this place was out of control.
Maybe. Or maybe one teenage kid just freelanced, regardless of whatever training s/he may have had.
In response to the “if you don’t want this liability, don’t apply for a liquor license” retort: I get that, 100%. I think it’s unfortunate, though, and I doubt it works that way in other countries that are less uptight. This is why I said that if you are looking to invest your money in something tangible and fun, there’s basically a penalty against going this route. If you’re not going to be there every day to supervise, you are a lot better off putting the same money into some fast food franchises or whatnot. And I would like to see encouragement of more restaurants serving alcohol, while this kind of thing just tends to create a big headwind–all the more so if it happens more often or gets publicized as is the case here.
I don’t understand why it’s not just a standard fine against the business when this is caught. Make them cough up a thousand bucks or whatever for each violation. Why does an owner have to be actually arraigned in court?
That still falls on the manager, and ultimately on the owner, because it’s part of their job as responsible sellers of alcohol to ensure that their employees are following the law.
Even more than that, they are responsible to make sure that some 17-year old server can’t just go walk up to the shelf and grab a bottle of beer as if it were a Coke.
Does that really make sense to you? As long as you implement whatever measures are considered industry-standard and reasonable, how can you be expected to have telepathic control over each employee? How is it different from a waiter who goes crazy and stabs a customer with a fork (other than this being a much more serious crime IMO)? If you didn’t have some obvious reason to think he was going to do that, the fork-stabbing is on the one who actually did it. Similarly, this 17 year old should be the one getting in trouble, and/or the restaurant should be fined. Arraigning an absentee owner in criminal court is ludicrous.
As others have said, it comes with the territory when you hold a liquor license. You are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your employees when they are on duty in your establishment. It’s called a dram shop law. Most states, including Minnesota, have one. And the license holder is the business for all legal purposes.
Yes. If you own the business, you’re ultimately liable for the conduct of your employees and anything else that happens in the business.
If someone slips on a wet floor and breaks their leg, you’re gonna be the one paying their medical bills regardless of whether or not you knew that the employee who mopped the floor didn’t put up a wet floor sign. If a waiter goes crazy and stabs people with a fork, you’re gonna be footing the bill for that too. These are the risks you assume when you own a business.
I don’t know the particulars of Minnesota state liquor laws, but if the state law is that the business is criminally culpable, then that’s something Kalil should have known about when he got into business and something he should have expected his managers to be on top of. You’ll note the article says the manager said the employee hadn’t gotten the required training for alcohol sales, so this is a clear case of negligence on part of the management, and that falls on Kalil because he’s the one who hired this person to run his business.
Yep. A liquor license (at least in PA) is worth a small fortune. When an applicant recieved the license he is told up front all the peculiarities of the law.
A buddy of mine just paid a big fine over the wording of a Facebook post. He sells mix-6 packs as “buy five beers, and the sixth is a penny”. His manager posted on Facebook “buy five and the sixth is free”. Selling a beer for a penny is legal, giving it away for free leads to a stiff fine.
You wrote that “If you own the business, you’re ultimately liable for the conduct of your employees and anything else that happens in the business.” Did you read that somewhere or did you make it up? Or is that just your philosophical position that just doesn’t happen to reflect reality?