Bruce Stanfield sustained severe facial injuries on Mulligan’s Bar & Grill’s premises when a beer bottle struck him in the face during a fight between two of Mulligan’s other patrons. As a result of his injuries, Stanfield required approximately $40,000 worth of medical treatment, including two surgeries. Stanfield sued Mulligan’s and Ray Woodcock, its owner and operator collectively referred to as “Mulligan’s”. A jury found in favor of Stanfield and awarded him $192,100. Mulligan’s appeals, alleging the Georgia Dram Shop Act1 and Georgia common law barred Stanfield’s claims. We disagree and affirm. The record shows that Stanfield’s injuries occurred while he was playing pool, unaware a fight had been escalating between two other patrons for hours. The other two patrons had been problematic earlier in the evening and, before that date, both had been banished from Mulligan’s for fighting. A Mulligan’s employee testified that one of these patrons “would get into verbal altercations a lot, you know, after . . . drinking all night. Sometimes it would escalate. And several times he has been removed from the bar.” The Mulligan’s security officer testified that the other patron was “not well and he is a feared individual. . . . He starts a lot of altercations.” The record further shows that Woodcock knew the bottle-throwing patron was problematic earlier on the night of the incident, and Woodcock admitted the bottle thrower should not have been in the bar because he had been banished previously for fighting.
On the night of the incident, at least five Mulligan’s employees, as well as Woodcock, were aware of the bottle-throwing patron’s presence at the bar and his demonstrably combative behavior beginning as early as three hours before Stanfield sustained his injury. Several Mulligan’s employees testified that they believed earlier in the night that a fight would eventually break out between the bottle-throwing patron and the other patron involved in the altercation. Additional patrons at the bar testified that they were puzzled by Mulligan’s failure to abate the problem and avoid the inevitable fight, especially since they had previously seen these patrons involved in fights at Mulligan’s. However, despite the mounting problems between the two combative patrons, the two were not ejected from the bar before beginning the fight that injured Stanfield.
