Late drinker’s beer at bar in Clements leads to fine

Proprietor is ordered to pay $500

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

James Clifton Fenwick of Chaptico said he wasn’t inside his business, Clifton’s Bar, on the morning of June 15 when the 2:05 a.m. violation occurred. ‘‘The beer was not bought there. The guy came inside the door with it,” Fenwick said. ‘‘The fact is the guy should not have been in the place. I’ll admit that.”

Joann Wood, the attorney for the Alcohol Beverage Board, said sheriff’s deputy Emory Johnson was doing a compliance check at that time when he saw someone open a can of Bud Light beer and drink from it. The drinker told the officer that he had purchased and just opened the beer, according to the board’s lawyer, adding that a bartender explained to the officer that he’d cleared the premises at 1:30 a.m. and ‘‘must have missed” the man caught drinking after hours.

Fenwick asked, ‘‘Shouldn’t a patron have some responsibility for this? I’m told that this guy was outside and somehow he got back inside with the beer. He did not buy this beer after 1:45. That’s when sales cut off.”

He added, ‘‘There’s no coming back once you’re out. If I had been there, it would not have happened.”

Wood said the violation strictly concerned the consumption of alcohol in the business after 2 a.m., regardless of where it came from, and Johnson said he could not take action against the man with the beer.

‘‘There was nothing I could charge him with, because he was legally on the premises,” the sheriff’s deputy said.

Board member Thomas Sacks’ motions to impose a pair of $250 fines for violations of state and county regulations from the incident were passed by the board.

In a separate matter, board members encouraged Daniel Guenther of Guenther’s Fine Wine and Spirits in Leonardtown to further pursue drafting legislation that would remove the state’s limit in St. Mary’s of 12 wine-tasting events a year at a business.

Guenther said additional free events to allow people to sample new wines would be joined by a ‘‘wine 101 class” with purchased textbooks and a qualified instructor. He said he also has proposed legislation to lift the state’s cap on wine festivals of one per county each year.

Board members suggested letting Guenther handle drafting the legislative proposals.

‘‘There’s no sense in us having a tug-of-war here,” Sacks said. ‘‘Maybe we can work together on this.”

Board Chairman Moses Saldaña said the local retail beverage association should be invited to offer its opinions on the proposals.