Restaurant Worker Injured Trying to Stop Drunk Driver, Lawsuit Settled

A restaurant worker in South Carolina who tried to stop an apparently intoxicated patron from driving away was allegedly punched in the eye during the confrontation in early March, leaving a separate bystander hospitalized with a brain bleed after the driver later caused a crash. Local authorities arrested the suspected driver following the incident. The civil lawsuit that followed settled nearly two years later.

The driver, according to the plaintiff's attorneys at BergerLawSC, had come straight from work to a local restaurant and bar, where he and his coworkers consumed what the firm's investigation described as "copious amounts of Jack Daniels." The firm alleged the establishment served the group 17 shots of liquor and six beers in a short amount of time without adequate monitoring. A coworker observed the driver growing "louder and more aggressive," but bartenders testified they "failed to notice any change in his behavior." The bartenders continued serving him and allowed him to leave without offering an escort, a cab, or an Uber.

The person injured in the crash that followed was an enlisted U.S. Army soldier who had recently returned from an overseas deployment and was spending the day shopping with her mother and daughter. After the accident, she was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, where physicians diagnosed her with a subdural hematoma, a brain bleed. She experienced severe headaches for more than a year and persistent back and neck pain. Her attorneys described her as a young mother who faced a painful daily calculation: whether to pick up her child seeking comfort, knowing that bending and lifting would leave her in agony.

The law firm filed suit against both the driver and the restaurant, pursuing what South Carolina law calls a dram-shop claim, which holds establishments liable for overserving customers who then cause harm. The firm argued the bartenders violated both state law and the restaurant's own alcohol service policies. The bartenders pushed back, denying that police video footage showed evidence of intoxication. The arresting officer, however, stated the driver "was clearly intoxicated and reeked of alcohol."

The case settled nearly two years after the crash. No settlement amount was disclosed. The firm noted that its client "still deals with the physical aftermath of the damage done to her."

The incident illustrates a liability gap that restaurant operators across the industry routinely underestimate. Dram-shop claims are not limited to standalone bars; any licensed establishment that serves alcohol faces exposure when staff continue pouring for visibly impaired customers and let them walk out the door without intervention. The 17-shots-and-six-beers allegation, if borne out by bar receipts and point-of-sale records, would represent a significant failure of the kind of floor-level monitoring that alcohol service training programs are specifically designed to prevent.