Court revokes bar’s license after crash
A state appeals court revoked a New Jersey bar’s liquor license for serving alcohol to a man who ended up killing 2 people in a 2000 automobile accident.
On November 14, the court upheld the decision by the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) to revoke the license of Cheerleaders, in Brooklawn, NJ. The bar will have six months to sell its license and pay a fine to the ABC, once the ABC determines what that fine should be.
According to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the court agreed that on April 15, 2000 the bar served alcohol to 23-year-old Humberto Herrera-Salas even though he was intoxicated.
Herrera-Salas was eventually ejected from the bar, drove south in the northbound lanes of Route 130, crashing head-on into another car and killing two people and injuring two others.
Herrera-Salas was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
The owner of Cheerleaders tried to have the ABC's ruling reversed, but the appellate panel focused on the fact that although bar employees forced Herrera-Salas to leave and called him a taxi because he had become drunk and abusive, no one stayed outside to make sure he got in the cab.
Herrera-Salas consumed three beers and three shots of tequila at the bar. A Cheerleaders’ bartender who served Herrera-Salas said he had not appeared visibly intoxicated at the time. However, witnesses in the bar said Herrera-Salas appeared drunk, and an expert at Rutgers University's Center for Alcohol Studies calculated that his blood alcohol level was already at .18, or nearly twice the existing legal limit of .10, by the time he arrived at the bar at 10:30 p.m. and then got in his car, backed up at high speed into a parked car in the parking lot and drove away. After the car accident, his blood alcohol level was measured at .28.
The families of the victims deserve to be rightfully compensated for their tremendous loss. In Pennsylvania, a law prohibits a bar from serving alcohol to a drunk patron. They would be well advised to contact a Pennsylvania auto accident attorney who will file a wrongful death claim against not only the driver but the bars who serve the drunk driver to fight for their rights.
According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report, in 2007, there were 500 fatalities in Pennsylvania and more than 200 in New Jersey caused by alcohol-related traffic accidents.
If you or a loved one has suffered severe physical injuries by a drunk driver in an automobile accident in Pennsylvania, please call the Pennsylvania personal injury attorneys at Cherry, Fieger and Marciano, LLP for a free case evaluation.
