Law: Drams & Damages

In the days when popular ballads sang of little tots tugging their papas away from the saloon and home to their sick and starving families, Illinois passed its Dram-Shops Act. Any one injured or deprived of his means of support as a result of another person’s intoxication could apply for damages not only from the grog seller, but from the grog seller’s landlord. Repealed during Prohibition, Illinois’ Dram-Shops Act of 1874 was revived in the Liquor Control Act of 1934, and last week it was invoked by a Chicago lady who claimed her Christmas had been spoiled by her husband’s dramming.

Plaintiff was attractive Mrs. Germaine Torrence, 28, whose husband Herbert, 36, a mail carrier tired from lugging Christmas mails, paused at a tavern during the holidays to have a few beers. Subsequently he stopped at a package store for wine and whiskey and then went home and gave his wife such a beating that she was “sick, sore, lame and disordered and did suffer a fractured nose.” Mrs. Torrence is now back with her husband, but last week she was asking $20,000 for her Yule beating from the landlords and proprietors of both the grogshop and package store. Prosecuting the case was smart, 26-year-old Lawyer Jacob Stagman, who is becoming somewhat of a specialist in Dram-Shops actions. He has had three other such cases, won $35,000 for the mother of a man who was shot dead in a saloon brawl, another $1,200 for an Armenian who got his skull cracked during a crap game in a saloon when he persisted in kibitzing after a superstitious dice-thrower complained that he was a jinx.