A Douglas County bar and strip club has been held liable for the death of a 22-year-old woman in a drunk driving crash in 2008. The crash was caused by a Mableton man who was driving with a blood-alcohol content of 0.398, which is five times the legal limit in Georgia of 0.08.
The 41-year-old was also killed in the DUI crash. The bar was held liable for serving alcohol to a noticeably intoxicated person who then drove and caused a fatal accident. The police say that they did not know how many drinks the man had, but that he must have been visibly intoxicated given his blood-alcohol level.
The man drove the wrong way down I-20 and ran head-on into a vehicle driven by the 22-year-old woman. The accident happened around 2 a.m. over the Fourth of July weekend in 2008. The two drivers died at the scene. A passenger of the woman’s car died on the way to the hospital and another passenger in that car was injured but survived.
If the driver would have survived, he likely would have been charged with vehicular homicide for causing a fatal accident while driving under the influence of alcohol.
Club Blaze was ordered by a jury at DeKalb State Court to pay $1.75 million to the family of the 22-year-old woman who was killed. The woman had two young children. Those children are now 4 and 5. The children’s grandmother said that the award would go into a college fund for her late daughter’s children so that they could reach their potential in life.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Strip club ordered to pay $1.75 million in fatal crash,” Angel K. Brooks, Sept. 20, 2011