Timothy St. Clair and a group of friends weren’t feeling the luck of Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, according to the facts in St. Clair v. 1511 Locust Tavern. That evening, Plaintiff St. Clair and his brother entered Misconduct Tavern on 15th and Locust in Center City, Philadelphia to use the restroom. At some point thereafter, St. Clair realized that his brother was involved in what looked to be an impending altercation. While approaching his brother, St. Clair was struck on the side of the face and knocked out.

A staff member of Misconduct Tavern assured St. Clair that the bar had surveillance equipment that would show the incident. St. Clair departed for the hospital, where he had surgery to reconstruct his deviated septum. St. Clair then called Misconduct Tavern two days after the incident to ensure that the promised videotape was preserved. He was told that it was.
Days later, Misconduct Tavern stopped responding to St. Clair. It was subsequently discovered that the bar had failed to preserve the videotape, at which point St. Clair filed a personal injury claim against the bar based upon the allegation that Misconduct Tavern served the already-intoxicated assailant more alcohol.

At trial, Misconduct Tavern argued that they could not be held liable for St. Clair’s personal injuries because there was no video tape proving the bar served a visibly intoxicated individual. St. Clair then asked for and was granted an adverse inference that Misconduct Tavern spoliated evidence by losing the videotape. An eight-member jury found in favor of St. Clair after determining that Misconduct Tavern did serve alcohol to the already-intoxicated assailant, an act of negligence that was a factual cause of St. Clair’s injuries. The verdict was $80,000.

In the future, if a videotape is promised, it appears that a videotape must then be delivered to avoid a damaging adverse inference on spoliation. When dealing with patrons’ misbehavior, bars like Misconduct should be careful going forward to preserve all videotapes of incidents.

Special thanks to Melanie Brother for her contributions to this post. For more information, please e-mail Bob Cosgrove .