Five Points Bar Faces Lawsuit After A Series Of Catastrophic DUI Accidents Involving Its Customers

When you are on campus, the University of South Carolina may not seem much like a party school, but if you are looking to spend your first semester of college in a drunken haze, then you need go no farther than the Five Points neighborhood.  It was in Five Points that the Stage Door became the first bar to sell a cocktail after South Carolina legalized mixed drinks in 1973.  Today, Five Points is the place to get drunk, whether you are walking from the University of South Carolina campus or driving across town to get there, or even if you have flown in from out of state for a destination wedding.  The bars in Five Points, as elsewhere in South Carolina, are prohibited by law from selling alcohol from someone who is noticeably too drunk to drive, especially when there is reason to believe that the person will be driving.  If you get injured by a drunk driver, dram shop liability laws enable you to file a lawsuit against the bar that served alcohol to the drunk driver.  If you have been injured in a drunk driving accident and are wondering whether dram shop liability laws apply to your case, contact a Columbia car accident lawyer.

A Pattern Emerges About Where Columbia’s Drunk Drivers Got Drunk

One night in July 2022, Joshua Collins got drunk at Jake’s of Columbia, a bar in Five Points.  After leaving the bar, he was driving the wrong way on Garners Ferry Road, when he collided head on with a car that was traveling in the correct direction.  The driver of the struck vehicle, Everardo Galarza, died as a result of the accident.  He was 23 years old.  When police arrived at the scene and tested Collins’s blood alcohol content (BAC), it was 0.135 percent, which is much higher than the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

A lawsuit filed by Galarza’s family alleges that Collins consumed several alcoholic beverages at Jake’s of Columbia before driving.  It is one of four dram shop liability lawsuits that the bar has faced this year.  All of them involve incidents where employees of Jake’s continued to serve alcohol to customers who were already drunk, and after the customers left the bar, they caused car accidents that involved serious injuries or fatalities.  News reports did not say whether Collins has faced criminal charges for causing the fatal accident.  The victim’s family may collect damages even if the at fault driver does not face criminal charges.  A guilty verdict or guilty plea in criminal cases automatically results in a verdict in favor of the plaintiff in a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit in civil court.

Let Us Help You Today

The car accident lawyers at the Stanley Law Group can help you if you were injured by a drunk driver who was driving home from a bar.  Contact The Stanley Law Group in Columbia, South Carolina or call (803)799-4700 for a free initial consultation.

Source:

wistv.com/2023/06/15/fourth-lawsuit-against-five-points-bar-alleges-overserving-patron-involved-deadly-accident/