Dallas Man Sues Richardson Bar For Letting Him Get Too Drunk

After a night of drinking too much, it’s not uncommon to wake up with a gnarly headache and perhaps a bit of nausea. Assuming that things didn’t get too out of hand, though, it’s not often that you assign blame for your overindulgence to the people serving you the booze.

But that’s what happened to one Dallas man after spending more than eight hours drinking at W.W. Fairfield’s, a bar in Richardson. According to the Dallas Morning News, Gordon Savage filed a lawsuit against the bar this week for allowing him to drink from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. one December evening last year.

After leaving the bar, Savage drove his car into a concrete barrier on North Central Expressway around 3 a.m. He was transported to a hospital, where he received treatment for “severe injuries.” According to the suit, Savage was not arrested for drunk driving after the incident.

The lawsuit seeks $1 million in damages and alleges that bar staff should have known when to cut Savage off. Savage’s attorney Tom Carse told the Dallas Morning News that “servers are trained to make sure customers aren’t drinking too much,” and that “they know when to offer food and water, and when to cut someone off if need be.”

The suit isn’t entirely without merit. Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission rules hold bars liable for overserving “visibly intoxicated” patrons. In the first half of 2016 alone, bars in Austin and Lubbock have faced similar lawsuits.