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A few years ago, Madison city regulators threatened to crack down on late-night drinking specials in the bars around the University of Wisconsin campus.
To avoid a city crackdown, some Madison bar owners got together and decided to voluntarily eliminate their drink specials on weekends.
That sounds like a good idea, but in our sometimes-litigious society, we often get punished for good ideas.
So it was in this case. A Minnesota law firm sued the bars in 2004 on behalf of UW students and other drinkers, who argued that the elimination of drinking specials amounted to an illegal price-fixing conspiracy — and a way to “rip off” students and other young drinkers.
The case made it to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, which dismissed it. The plaintiffs continued, and last week the state Supreme Court upheld the Appeals Court ruling.
Justice David Prosser wrote that the bars were exempt from the state anti-trust law because they clearly were responding to pressure from the city of Madison, which wanted a broad ban on drink specials citywide.
Instead, with the voluntary action of the campus-area bars, they ended up with 20 bars that agreed to end the specials after 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
The Minnesota law firm also has a similar case pending in federal court. Let’s hope that case gets thrown out as well.
It seems pretty clear that the only purpose served by late-night drinking specials is to ensure that the clientele gets drunker. But the last thing we need, in Madison or La Crosse, is to have more young people with 0.20 blood-alcohol levels — or higher — wandering the streets.
At that level of drinking, which is sadly not uncommon, people can be vulnerable and they can get hurt or worse.
The Supreme Court made the right call in this case. Let’s hope the federal court follows suit.
