Western Civilization on the Brink

With his cache of existential legal experience (“existential” here meaning “court appearances”) in his hip pocket, The Captain must weigh in on the Trial of the Century, and he must do so in the third person, because it sounds kinda cool that way and lends a certain gravitas to the whole thing, which is crucial when the singular perspective of said experience is in the role of defendant.

It was bad enough that those Judicial activists on the Supreme Court persecuted an Alaskan High School student for worshipping his Lord and Savior in the fashion of Jerry Garcia (remember Bong Hits for Jesus?). Now, the very fabric of our society, the drink special, is on trial in the heartland of our country. Your right to get smashed on the cheap is under assault and the assailants are none other than those Benedict Arnold Barkeeps in the college town of Madison, WI, which is somewhere slightly below Canada and substantially above the legal limit.

Drink-Special Ban Before Wis. High Court

By RYAN J. FOLEY
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 3, 2007; 5:15 PM

MADISON, Wis. -- The state Supreme Court is deciding whether an agreement among bar owners to abandon weekend drink specials was a legal effort to discourage binge drinking or a possible antitrust violation (The Captain cries foul! Those bartenders in Poughkeepsie who all shut me off during senior week violated my antitrust!!)

In oral arguments (Just once I’d like to see a lawyer mime an argument.) Wednesday, lawyer Kay Hunt asked the justices to reinstate a lawsuit claiming the 2002 agreement by about two dozen bars in this college town was an illegal price-fixing conspiracy (Yeah! Whatever she said!). She represents drinkers who claim they were overcharged (Punch your ticket to Heaven Ms. Hunt) in a lawsuit rejected twice by lower courts. (Heinous. Simply heinous.)

"Here, you have a group of competitors that bound together to eliminate drink specials," a deal that "constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade (and one that inhibited my Constitutional right to abandon all reasonable restraint on Nickel Night at the Nite Cap)," Hunt said.

A lawyer representing the bars told the justices that the voluntary agreement was a response to local government (Less Government. More Cheap Booze!). At the time, some city officials were threatening to ban drink specials altogether and University of Wisconsin-Madison officials were pressuring bar owners to help reduce binge drinking among students (A prejudicial argument which unfairly targets drunks. You don’t see the government asking Nabisco or Pillsbury to artificially raise the price of cookies just because their products are popular with bulimics, do you? Then keep your stinkin’ paws off my cheap gin!)

"This wasn't some secret meeting of the bar owners," said Kevin O'Connor, a lawyer representing 20 bars and the Dane County Tavern League (No doubt the shameless O’Connor’s fees were paid for by the ill-gotten profits from inflated bottom shelf liquor). "This was all initiated by the city."

The bars, about half of those near campus, announced in September 2002 they would voluntarily ban drink specials on Friday and Saturday nights after 8 p.m (Unintended side effect: the teen pregnancy rate in Madison has decreased significantly since that Draconian decree was issued).

Hunt's firm filed the lawsuit in 2004 on behalf of UW-Madison students and other customers who sought "tens of millions of dollars" in damages for being forced to pay too much for their booze (How does one put a price tag on the “inconceivables” – the babies who were never conceived due to the government’s forced sobriety. In a bizarre way, The Captain likens this to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If George Bailey was never born…Well, if the drink specials had never been banned, countless one night stands would never have been prevented, condoms never forgotten in wallets, and unwanted Caucasian babies never created for convenient adoption by rich, infertile couples).

The bars withdrew the ban after the lawsuit was filed. A university-sponsored study also showed that serious alcohol-related crime continued to go up despite the policy (Which proves one of The Captain’s original aphorisms: Booze doesn’t make people drunk; people make people drunk.).

A judge dismissed the case in 2005 and an appeals court upheld the decision last year. Both courts said the bars' action was exempt from antitrust laws because they were reacting to regulatory pressure from the city (A plague on you Madison!!!!).

Eric Wilson, a state lawyer representing UW-Madison, said the case was not about price fixing but about trying to combat dangerous drinking among college students.

"The bars tried to work with the city and the university to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem (Spare me the High School assembly morality lesson. The Tavern cartel, like OPEC with crude oil, can now arbitrarily set the price of a keg of beer – if that’s not Un-American, I don’t know what is!)," he said.

Justices did not indicate how they intend to rule and had tough questions for both sides (Like “What in the name of Bacchus and Budweiser were you thinking????”).

© 2007 The Associated Press

Believe The Captain when he says, "Give Me Cheap Booze or Give Me Death!"

Yours from the witness stand, cheap drink in hand,

The Captain