Holiday season is officially upon us, and with businesses open again, that means the return of office holiday parties, end-of-the-year happy hours and social club mixers. That none of these champagne-filled events kicked off last year, only means that the 2021 holiday season will be determined to make up for lost time. It also means that we should all be mindful, and stay off the roads as much as possible. For lawyers, bar owners, and those with knowledge of the dram shop laws in Florida, we know this is especially true in our state.

When we think about a bar's responsibility to the general public, we often assume that the bar cannot overserve their patrons—that the bar would be liable if they overserved a patron, who then drove home from the bar and injured someone. Disturbingly, in Florida, this is not the case! Instead, Florida's Dram Shop Act (Fla. Stat. Section 768.125) details that a bar is not liable for damage or injury caused by one of their intoxicated patrons, unless the intoxicated person is a minor or the bar "knowingly serves a person habitually addicted to … alcohol." For bar owners, this often means skating liability if they overserve an adult, if they did not previously know the patron.