Do pubs/nightclubs have a duty of care

SarahChambers

They do have a duty of care, just like any other establishment. The issue of your own contributory negligence could be a problem if you wanted to make a claim but they certainly do owe you a duty of care if it reasonably foreseeable that their actions could cause you harm, ie chucking you out on the street.

filthymcnasty

drkpower wrote: »

Sorry, your answer wasnt entirely clear - you might clarify what specifically you do when you pass drunk homeless people:
1. call an ambulance
2. comfort them
3. bring them home
4. other

Thanks.

got your work cut out for you there

mikemac

DigiGal wrote: »

but a girl could be raped or worse.

And if she did then she'd probably tell her family and gardai her drink was spiked and it was nothing to do with all the alcohol

Now there's a way to absolve yourself of responsibility

Liam Byrne

salonfire wrote: »

...to their customers? Last night I was standing outside a club when two bouncers threw a girl out in a heap outside.

She was completely totaled, didn't even know her own name type of way

If she doesn't care about herself to behave appropriately, why should they ?

Liam Byrne

Deleted User wrote: »

We've all been in that state at some point..

Please avoid incorrect sweeping generalisations.......the OP said that the girl in question couldn't remember her own name and was sick...."completely totalled", I think was the phrase.

drkpower

SarahChambers wrote: »

They do have a duty of care, just like any other establishment. The issue of your own contributory negligence could be a problem if you wanted to make a claim but they certainly do owe you a duty of care if it reasonably foreseeable that their actions could cause you harm, ie chucking you out on the street.

Of course they have a duty.
The issue is the extent of that duty.
They will not be liable merely because they can foresee that a drunk customer might injure themselves if they eject them from the club.

Mossy Monk

DigiGal wrote: »

that is a ridiculous completely unconstructive reply.....

well done you

Just carrying on from you my dear.

Rev. BlueJeans

If "niteclubs" applied a policy of not serving pissheads, half the place would clear.

Give me a late bar with a decent band any day of the year.

Liam Byrne

Rev. BlueJeans wrote: »

If "niteclubs" applied a policy of not serving pissheads, half the place would clear.

Very true, but then normal people might actually want to go there, and it might be a decent night out.

That said, the owners mightn't be too keen on this approach, because they'd be down the profits associated with serving drink to people who've already had way too much.

Rev. BlueJeans wrote: »

Give me a late bar with a decent band any day of the year.

+1

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

El Weirdo wrote: »

Do people not have a duty of care to themselves any more? Why should the state she was in be anyone's responsibility but her own?

Very true, but some people simply do not have the maturity to make responsible decisions. To induce alcohol, you must be 18 or over, I know lots of people who simply do not have the brain power to "use" alcohol sensibly. The onus is on the bars and clubs to stop selling alcohol to people who are visibly drunk. This is difficult, because I can drink a lot of beer/spirits and pretend to be sober. On the other hand, I know some people are the opposite, one girl in perticular. After one pint she is fine, a bit tipsy. She orders a second pint and can't walk by the end of that pint. How can a barman know what somebody will be like after one or two pints? If somebody is visibly drunk at the bar, they shouldn't be served. There is a differance between been drunk and not being able to walk, talk and interact. It's the later I am talking about. I refused plenty of people for this.

Blazer

El Weirdo wrote: »

Do people not have a duty of care to themselves any more? Why should the state she was in be anyone's responsibility but her own?

By the same reasoning why we should pay social welfare to unemployed and disabled people; a pension to OAPs and foreign aid to less well off countries?

Liam Byrne

Berkut wrote: »

By the same reasoning why we should pay social welfare to unemployed and disabled people; a pension to OAPs and foreign aid to less well off countries?

That's not "the same reasoning"

- it's not someone's "fault" that they're disabled
- it's not someone's "fault" that they're unemployed (particularly nowadays)
- it's not someone's "fault" that they're OAPs (and almost everyone will be, at some stage)
- it's not someone's "fault" that they were born in a third-world country

It IS, however, someone's fault if they haven't enough cop-on to know when to stop drinking to extreme excess.

tiernanobrien

Yeah I think they do owe you a duty of care. Sure look at the two barmen that got done for manslaughter recently for giving some lad too much drink...

number10a

tiernanobrien wrote: »

Yeah I think they do owe you a duty of care. Sure look at the two barmen that got done for manslaughter recently for giving some lad too much drink...

Source?? Or even more info?? I'm on RTÉ News' website everyday, I watch the news and read the paper and I've never heard of this.

SarahChambers

drkpower wrote: »

Of course they have a duty.
The issue is the extent of that duty.
They will not be liable merely because they can foresee that a drunk customer might injure themselves if they eject them from the club.

The title of the tread is do pubs/nightclubs have a duty of care you bollox

Nonetheless, the extent of of the duty depends to some extent on what I refered to earlier, the plaintiff's contributory negligence. All actions which result in harm can result in a successful law suit provided that it was reasonably foreseeable on the part of the defendant that these actions could have resulted in this harm.

drkpower

SarahChambers wrote: »

The title of the tread is do pubs/nightclubs have a duty of care you bollox

Nonetheless, the extent of of the duty depends to some extent on what I refered to earlier, the plaintiff's contributory negligence. All actions which result in harm can result in a successful law suit provided that it was reasonably foreseeable on the part of the defendant that these actions could have resulted in this harm.

Excuse me?!

Just another little correction though - The extent of of the duty has nothing to do with the plaintiff's contributory negligence..! Quit with the amatuer legal advice!:D

9wetfckx43j5rg

I believe they do have a duty of care.

I'm not expecting them to sit down with the girl, cos to be honest they probably deal with this every night, but they could of at least called the girl a ambulance. It would of taken then 2 minutes.

And to the one's responding that it's her own fault we've all been there.

I turned 18 this year at a house party and drank so much vodka I ended up as sick as a dog the whole night. The lads at the party who I vaguely knew as old friends of my brother watched over me, one even walked down the stairs in front of me to make sure I wouldn't fall and then made sure I got home ok.

We all have bad nights and I learned from that one and realized I can't handle alcohol.

Where was this girls friends, the people she was out with?

Recently me and all my new college mates went to freshers day. One of the girls there got roaring drunk and wasn't allowed into the next pub because she fell flat on her face just as we were trying to get in. One of the girls was looking after her but couldn't handle her so one of lads left for the night, got into a taxi with her, brought her home and slept on the couch because she was so ill.

I'd never leave a drunk mate alone so where were all hers?

SarahChambers

drkpower wrote: »

Excuse me?!

Just another little correction though - The extent of of the duty has nothing to do with the plaintiff's contributory negligence..! Quit with the amatuer legal advice!:D

Yes it does, look it up.

If anything it is amateur legal advice

4zn76tysfajdxp

SarahChambers wrote: »

The title of the tread is do pubs/nightclubs have a duty of care you bollox

Nonetheless, the extent of of the duty depends to some extent on what I refered to earlier, the plaintiff's contributory negligence. All actions which result in harm can result in a successful law suit provided that it was reasonably foreseeable on the part of the defendant that these actions could have resulted in this harm.

Banned.

drkpower

SarahChambers wrote: »

Yes it does, look it up.

If anything it is amateur legal advice

I dont need to look it up, Sarah. Contributory negligence of the drunk customer would only be considered after it has been shown that the club is or is not negligent. So the contributory negligence of the drunk is an entirely seperate consideration to whether the club has a duty of care.

Im afraid you are a little out of your depth. Which is why you are resorting to name calling and spell-checking.

Monkey61

Obviously people should be responsible for themselves, but I think it is a bit unfair to say that anyone who gets themselves into that state should be left to sort themselves out if they are clearly unable to. People make silly mistakes all the time. If someone gets beaten up for walking alone down a dark alleyway at night, I wouldn't leave them to sort out their own ambulance etc because it was their own stupid decision to do stray somewhere unsafe.

As has been pointed out, someone can easily be pushed over the edge by one drink, even if they were drinking within their usual limits. I had a nasty incident at a club a few months ago where I got way drunker than I normally would and fell asleep on a couch. I was removed from the building - still passed out and left sleeping on the street outside. I woke up, confused and tried to get back into the club. The bouncer wouldn't let me. I explained that my bag, phone, money etc were inside and that I had no way of contacting my friends or getting home. Not his problem. Yep it was entirely my own fault for getting myself into that situation and I accept that, but leaving me in tears and panicking to sleep on the streets of an unfamiliar city was surely a step too far.

Rev. BlueJeans

As is often seen on Chavs Get Boozed Innit?, or any number of UK cop shows, people tend to get handed over to the law, who may call in paramedics if necessary. I doubt that happens much behind the cameras over there.

Another issue is whether they, or Irish cops would have the resources to deal with such occurrences of a Saturday night. Unlikely tbh.

I like my pint as much as the next guy, but dealing with binge drinking (and if one drink is enough to push you over the edge like that, it's not that one drink, it's the five or six before it, and the speed at which you consume them), is an uphill battle that has as much to do with peers and education as it has to do with security staff washing their hands of the matter (which they're probably instructed to do by the club owners and managers anyway).

entropi

From what i can gather, the club only has responsibility for people on the premises, which is why they throw out, or wont let in anyone who looks/acts ossified. Once on public property then it is the person themselves, their friends/family or in some cases the emergency services who have responsibility for said drunk person.

pikachucheeks

dny123456 wrote: »

Swallowing your tongue would be fairly tricky even when sober!

It's been known to happen. Hence why in the recovery position and when giving mouth to mouth, you lift the chin up.

If someone drinks too much in a nightclub, it's really their own fault. You can't blame the nightclub for someone getting drunk.
However, surely you can blame the nightclub if an employee serves alcohol to someone who has clearly gone overboard or is obviously intoxicated?

I think bouncers should be more sympathetic towards people who get ... trollied in bars/nightclubs. When drunk, people are in quite a vunerable state. I know bouncers must be fed up with dealing with drunks all the time, but throwing someone who's extremely drunk and on their own out of the club is hardly appropriate - anything could happen to them.

Adyx

pikachucheeks wrote: »

It's been known to happen. Hence why in the recovery position and when giving mouth to mouth, you lift the chin up.

If someone drinks too much in a nightclub, it's really their own fault. You can't blame the nightclub for someone getting drunk.
However, surely you can blame the nightclub if an employee serves alcohol to someone who has clearly gone overboard or is obviously intoxicated?

I think bouncers should be more sympathetic towards people who get ... trollied in bars/nightclubs. When drunk, people are in quite a vunerable state. I know bouncers must be fed up with dealing with drunks all the time, but throwing someone who's extremely drunk and on their own out of the club is hardly appropriate - anything could happen to them.

The long and the short of it is that pubs/clubs do have a duty of care in some regards. It is illegal to allow a drunken person on your premises or to serve alcohol to a drunken person. A member of staff who does serve someone who is intoxicated or to the point of intoxication can be held responsible if that person ends up in an accident. As pikachucheeks said though, that shouldn't absolve the drunk person from any blame and you can't expect pubs to put people in taxis home or to call their parents or something. They should ensure that the person should not be admitted or served or if necessary removed in a suitable manner.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Yes they do.

I'll give one example.

One particular incident comes to mind.

There was a fight in a club I worked in a few years back, naturally we threw both guys out - grand stuff, problem solved. Until one of the lads followed the guy who was originally assaulted (or claimed to be) down the road, took a lump of wood from a skip and beat him half to death with it.

We were held liable as it was the courts view that we had a duty of care since we put both guys out.

And whilst its an easy, and probably very accurate assumption to say this girl (in the OP's post) was drunk and so was responsible for her own action's, its also a very dangerous assumption. Because again speaking with the benefit of experience I can tell you that its not always the case that either the person was A; Drunk or B; That they weren't spiked.

I've seen a it happen so many time's that (even I) made the assumption that someone was hammered only to discover that it was a medical issue, either through medication (or lack of in the case of a diabetic) or illness.

So some people here need to get off their high horse's

grundie

Between 1916 and 1973, all the pubs and breweries in Carlisle were run by the government - the "Carlisle State Management Scheme" as it was known.

They had a rule "No Treating", which meant you could not buy rounds. You could only buy one drink at a time. You could still get drunk, you just had to take your time.

If that same rule was applied to all the pubs and nightclubs that have a reputation for letting their patrons get hammered, as a temporary sanction perhaps, I think there would be fewer incidents such as the one described by the OP.

salonfire

Monkey61 wrote: »

If someone gets beaten up for walking alone down a dark alleyway at night, I wouldn't leave them to sort out their own ambulance etc because it was their own stupid decision to do stray somewhere unsafe.

Thats a good point; many people wouldn't leave someone to sort themselves out if they were after a beating. People would try help in some sort of a way

Her friends were inside the club but wouldn't answer their phones - its heard to hear a phone ring over the noise of a packed night club. Plus we weren't sure who to call, just her last dialled numbers

Anyway her friends came out half an hour later looking for her and they carried her off into the night. I guess it took them a while to realise she was missing.

And yes we all have had a night like that we learn the first valuable lesson about drinking - it can go horribly wrong. I guess that was her night.

pikachucheeks

Makikomi, because you said you worked in a club, can I ask legally, what a pub or club is supposed to do if someone's drunk and / or causing hassle on their premises?

MAB83

I used to work in a bar. You get so used to drunk people that after a while you don't bat an eyelid but there were times where I genuinely worried about some people and went out to check on them/call them a taxi. Whether they're a girl or a guy wouldn't matter, bad things happen to guys too.

It always used to baffle me as to where their friends fecked off to half the time though. I know you shouldn't have to babysit your friend but surely you should look out for them.