"Boat Club takes case to Indiana Court of Appeals," is the headline to this story posted 4/30/04 by WNDU-TV in South Bend:
Can underage drinkers be sued if they use a fake ID to get into a bar? That's a question the Indiana Court of Appeals wants to hear more about. Oral arguments have been scheduled for May 7th in a case that originated in South Bend. In January of 2003, police caught more than 200 underage drinkers inside a bar called Boat Club. The owners of the bar face potential penalties as a result. They, in turn, then filed lawsuits seeking damages from the underage drinkers. A local court dismissed the suits, so the bar owners took the case to the Indiana Court of Appeals.Background is available via this story on the National Association of Convenience Stores website. Headlined "Hazards of Underage Drinking Get More Costly--For The Drinkers," the 7/31/03 story, dateline South Bend, begins:
The Boat Club in South Bend, Ind., is looking for restitution from underage drinkers caught in a raid at the bar. Mike McNeff, owner of The Boat Club's parent company, The Millennium Club, is suing the underage patrons nabbed in the raid for $3,000 per person for misrepresentation, which constitutes civil fraud, reports Fox News.This is from an October 2, 2003 editorial in The Observer, The Independent Newspaper Serving Notre Dame and Saint Mary's, headlined "Support Students, not Boat Club":On January 24, Indiana State Excise Police, Indiana State Police and the South Bend police raided The Boat Club. The sting caught 213 underage drinkers. The Boat Club had a choice between losing its liquor license or being fined $5,000 and selling its liquor license to a new owner.
According to Fox News, more alcohol sellers are going after underage drinkers if their business suffers damages in such stings. For example, in 1998 John Korpita, owner of the Amherst Brewing Company, sued an underage patron who used two fraudulent IDs to gain access to his brewpub for $3,713 and won. Korpita had to pay a $2,500 fine when the underage drinker was found in his bar, so he filed a civil complaint against the customer.
In an attempt to recoup some of the losses the bar faces from ATC prosecution, The Boat Club filed suit against the 200 underage patrons cited in the Jan. 24 raid, requesting $300 per case. For the students involved in these lawsuits, the legal process has been long, frustrating, expensive and confusing.According to the Clerk of the Courts Online Docket entry, the oral argument is set for 10 a.m., Friday, May 7, 2004 at Franklin College, Franklin, Indiana. In addition, on 4/29/04 the Court issued the following order:Students could opt to pay a South Bend attorney $500 to help them navigate through the court system or attempt to sort through the lawsuits by themselves if they could not afford attorney fees.
In addition, students who thought the lawsuit would be resolved within a few months discovered they were mistaken. After a South Bend judge dismissed about 40 suits, citing a lack of legal precedent for such litigation, The Boat Club choose to appeal those suits and attempted to force all other students to agree to continuances until April 2004, a delay of an additional seven months.
Because of its decision to appeal some of the lawsuits, The Boat Club has retained a second attorney to handle the appeals and must pay expensive court costs to file the suits in the Indiana Court of Appeals. The bar has already invested a significant amount of money in these lawsuits, paying $73 of court costs for each case plus attorney fees for South Bend lawyer Mitch Heppenheimer since last spring.
COMES NOW THE COURT AND HEREBY REQUESTS THAT IN THEIR PREPARATION FOR THE ORAL ARGUMENT, THE ATTORNEYS OF RECORD GIVE CONSIDERATION TO THE APPLICABILTY OF THE FOLLOWING CASES TO THE INSTANT CASE: BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY BEVERAGE CO., INC. V. BARCO BEVERAGE CORP., INC., 524 N.E.2D 353 (IND. CT. APP. 1988), AND RINERT V. MORTELL, 680 N.E. 2D 867 (IND. CT. APP. 1997).Posted by Marcia Oddi at May 2, 2004 06:23 PM
JAMES S. KIRSCH, CHIEF JUDGE MS