Standard-Examiner Editorial: Clubs Deserve Due Process

The Utah DABC bullies will ultimately learn about the legal concept of "due process" the "hard way," but not before Ms. Harwood has been forced to expend thousands of more dollars for her legal defense

Top notch editorial in this morning's Standard-Examiner, illustrating the bass-ackwards approach of the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control toward the hapless licensees whom this bull-headed agency regulates:

• Our View: Clubs deserve due process

While Utah law mandates that a Utah restaurant or bar patron's drivers license information be collected by an "electronic age verification device," and added to an electronic database for short-term access by DABC officials or law enforcement authorities, the same regulatory provisions require that such information shall be purged from that database after seven days.  In the instant case however, the boys at the Utah DABC didn't even reportedly take action until fourteen days after the alleged violation, seven full days after the "collected" electronic info had been deleted.

Plainly wethink, this matter ought to have been tossed out at the first DABC administrative hearing,  in the interest of fairness, if for no other reason.  But that's not how works in Utah, where the very state regulators who ought to be at least to some extent looking after the interests of the licensees whom they regulate, prefer at every opportunity to give their Utah licensee charges the needle.  As it stands, therefore, the Utah DABC bullies will ultimately learn about the legal concept of "due process" the "hard way," but not before Ms. Harwood has been unnecessarily forced to expend thousands of more dollars for her own legal defense, of course.