Spilled champagne leads to lawsuit

It is New Year’s Eve in a Metro East bar. At midnight, the bar offers free champagne to patrons to toast in the New Year. Shockingly, some champagne spills onto the floor of the bar during the toast. A customer completely unaware of the spilled champagne and completely oblivious to the fact that there may be champagne on the floor takes a step and slips and falls.

Five months later, she has filed a lawsuit against the bar claiming the fall hurt her back.

Of course, a night at a Metro East bar ends with a lawsuit. This is Madison and St. Clair Counties we are talking about, after all. Where else but a Metro East bar would an offer of free champagne end up in a lawsuit?

Perhaps we need the Legislature to step in and ban toasting or to require bars to post signs warning patrons that drunken people toasting may lead to spilled drinks and wet floors.

Or perhaps, we as a society could shed our addiction to abusive lawsuits and begin to take responsibility for ourselves and our own actions. If only common sense and individual responsibility were as common as spilled champagne at a New Years Eve party…