The family sued Aramark, the NFL, the Giants and the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority, which owns Giants Stadium. The judge dismissed all parties but Aramark, which was assessed $105 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Lanzaro, who is serving a five-year prison term for vehicular assault, was assessed $30 million.
Aramark, which is appealing, is party to another beer-and-ball-related lawsuit, this one in Denver, where Jeff Black, a 37-year-old resident of the Longmont suburb, is suing the company and the Colorado Rockies for what happened to him and his son at a 2004 baseball game.
Three men, sloppily drunk, stumbled into seats behind them and began loudly spewing obscenities. "I've been going to sporting events for 30 years," Black said, "and this was the worst I've ever seen." He endured it for a while, then quietly asked them to stop, noting that he had his 9-year-old son with him. The men leaned over and menaced them.
Black found an usher. One of the men had fled, stumbling up the stairs, and the usher followed him. But minutes later, the man returned with a full cup of beer. Black flagged the same usher, who told the men to leave.
One of the men came back yet again and dumped a cup of beer over the heads of Black and his son. Again the usher hustled the man out, but another of the men returned and doused the Blacks with more beer. "All hell broke loose," Black recalled.
Four or five fans flew out of their seats and tackled the man in the aisle. "These full-grown men were beating him to the ground, beating this guy with their fists," Black recalled. "It was scary."
The two men who attacked the Blacks were convicted of assault, fined, given suspended sentences and ordered to perform community service. Black is asking that the Rockies implement a five-year plan to monitor alcohol sales and provide adequate security. He also wants to be awarded damages.
Rules for Consumption
The Redskins' concessionaire is Centerplate, based in Spartanburg, S.C., which handles nine other NFL teams and six Major Leage Baseball teams. Gael Doar, a spokeswoman for Centerplate, said her company is aware of what happened in Denver and has used the incident to review its polices and training for FedEx Field personnel. Those polices include checking identification for anyone buying alcohol who looks younger than 30, enforcing a four-beer limit, refusing to sell to anyone who appears intoxicated and adhering to the NFL-mandated halt to beer sales at the end of the third quarter.
Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson said: "We rely totally on Centerplate. Our approach is, 'Tell us what to do, and we'll do it.' "
George Hacker, a lawyer and public health expert who directs the Alcohol Policies Project for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, would like to see more stringent controls. He believes stadiums shouldn't start beer service before kickoff. "That is a principal problem," he said. "Even though concessionaires do the best job they can, they have a bunch of drunken louts to deal with, even before the beginning of the game."
He recommends limiting the size of containers. "Some stadiums serve 24-ounce beer, which is really two beers," he pointed out, "and they sell two at a time. That's four beers."
Stadiums also could serve low-alcohol beers, he suggested, and, in addition to limiting the number of beers a person can buy, they should provide bracelets or cards to prevent concession-stand shopping. "They should stop hawking in the stands, which makes ID-checking difficult," Hacker said. "If you're sitting in the middle of a row, you're not going to pass your driver's license 10 seats down; it just doesn't work.
"They should eliminate beer signs all over the stadium. At RFK and MCI, every exit has a beer sign over it, so the first thing you're thinking about is having a beer."
And he said: "Police in the stands should be much more aggressively looking for people who are obviously intoxicated."
Police and security had a relatively easy time of it yesterday, certainly easier than the Redskins' beleaguered offense. A handful of people had to be ejected from the stadium, Sheppard reported, and only a couple ended up in the holding facility the police department maintains in the building. They faced disorderly conduct charges. He's seen as many as a half-dozen held during a game.
"Alcohol and trash talking," one of his fellow officers commented, shortly after helping break up a third-quarter scuffle. "Put the two together, and that's what happens."
