just a head’s up for all you in the business of pouring, selling, or otherwise furnishing alcohol: “Welcome to your worst nightmare: You serve a customer at a winery tasting room (or at a party at a winery) who turns out to be younger than 21, and who later gets into an accident or commits a crime like assault where alcohol is a factor and you end up with a felony, which bars you from the wine industry for the foreseeable future. AB 1128 (currently on a fast track to pass through the California legislature) amends Business & Professions (“B&P”) Code Sec. 25658 and ups the potential penalty for sales to a minor (from a misdemeanor to a felony) when the minor causes an injury, death or damage to others.
Civil damages for selling or furnishing alcohol to a minor who gets into an accident or causes harm is already part of the law and the potential consequences of a current incident include license revocation for a licensee (Sections 25602 and 25602.1).”
Are they going to create a on-the-spot eVerify system so you’d have at least a prayer of checking whether the ID you are shown is real?? Anyone in the biz knows this is an impossible situation in the real world.
The key language here is “business owners (restaurants, convenience stores and, yes, wineries) who (knowingly or otherwise) serve or sell wine to customers who present false ID or who appear to be over the age of 21.”
Along with the possible reduction of the legal limit to .05, this is starting to look a bit like a Prohibition era series of Draconian measures. Pretty ridiculous… if it weren’t for the fact it could actually pass.
Please, someone, post the best way to let all CA Assemblypersons hear from the public on this.
Hmmmmm… Checking the actual bill on line… it includes a pass for employees: “This bill would provide for an exception from felony prosecution for a retail employee of a licensee, unless the retail employee knew the person to whom the alcoholic beverage was sold was under 21 years of age.” So… the licensee (owner) is committing a felony even if they’re not there? Or… even more ridiculous, is the licensee the only one in the business who can be charged with the felony??? Not making a lot of sense to me, but that’s no big surprise.
Indeed the level of bureaucracy associated with owning a winery & tasting room is crazy.
I routinely have to deal with 15 different government agencies for my little ole winery.
This does not include the 50 state sales tax revenue collectors. (which is more like 75-100 more, since to sell wine in many states you have to deal with two separate agencies, and sometimes three.
The bill appears to have been passed out of committee last Friday. Not sure where the next stop is.
I haven’t had time to look around to see if any of the industry advocacy groups are following this. Just seems like more mis-guided ‘do good’ legislation from people who think being anti-drunk driving is smarter than having common sense. I’d ‘follow the money’ on this one and see where the trial lawyers are on it.
Looks like the bill was amended to require that even the license holder has to have “knowingly” made an underage sale (used to say “knowingly OR OTHERWISE”). HUGE difference from where this started.,… IMHO. Doesn’t seem as if you could “know” if you’re not there… at least it doesn’t make sense that you could.
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Are they going to create a on-the-spot eVerify system so you’d have at least a prayer of checking whether the ID you are shown is real?? Anyone in the biz knows this is an impossible situation in the real world.