Somehow, the Maui County Liquor Commission has managed to create Liquor Rules that are both draconian and lenient. They prompt cries of a miscarriage of justice no matter where you stand. If you sympathize with an establishment that finds itself under the LC’s thumb, the Rules seem unnecessarily rough. But if you want the hammer to fall on a transgressing licensee, the Rules will leave you disappointed.
Serving minors is a perfect example. If a bartender or server hands a kid a drink for whatever reason—negligence, stupidity, bitterness—it’s the owner who faces the wrath of LC. And it’s a lot of wrath—to a point.
That’s because whether a place is serving one minor or 10, the punishment is the same: a strike. Sure, they’ll get fined $2,000 for each case, but it’s the strike that hurts. Earn three and you’re out of business.
The most notorious example of that was last November’s Hyatt Regency Maui case. It began with a drunken, naked 18-year cheerleader accidentally falling to her death from one of the Ka’anapali hotel’s ninth floor balconies on Jan. 12, 2004 and ended with the LC racking up 24 separate instances of various hotel bars serving minors. The Hyatt ended up pleading no contest to all the charges. Even though the counts were 24 times worse than if an establishment had gotten caught serving a single minor, they still just added up to one.
We keep hearing that the Liquor Commission will be revising the Rules, but it won’t happen anytime soon. What will happen soon is that Maui-Molokai Sea Cruises, which operates the tour boat Prince Kuhio, will appear before the Adjudication Board on May 5 facing five counts, four of which deal with serving minors.
It all went down last September 23, between the hours of 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. As is often the case, the company is pleading no contest.
In fact, the case looks a lot like the Hyatt Regency Maui matter—minus the dead naked cheerleader, of course. MTW
Comments
comments