Hernando County Jury Awards $41.9 Million After Applebee's Serves Underage Drinkers Whose Passenger Is Left Quadriplegic

In 2012, Patrick Osmond was 20 years old when he walked into an Applebee's restaurant at 20090 Cortez Boulevard in Hernando County with his step-brother and two other men. None of them were of legal drinking age. The restaurant served the group a pitcher of beer anyway.

Later that night, Osmond was riding in the bed of a pickup truck when the vehicle crashed into a tree. The impact left him a quadriplegic. He was 20 years old.

Four years later, a Hernando County jury heard the case that Florin Roebig attorneys Tommy Roebig, Wil Florin, Shaun Cummings, and John Hart built around Florida's dram shop statute, which holds alcohol vendors liable for injuries caused when they serve underage patrons. The central question was whether Applebee's bore responsibility for what happened after it handed a pitcher to four people not old enough to legally drink.

The jury returned a verdict of $41.9 million. It apportioned 20 percent of fault to Applebee's, translating to roughly $8.4 million in direct liability, with the remainder assigned to other parties. After the verdict, Osmond reached a post-trial settlement with the restaurant chain: Applebee's agreed to pay and not pursue an appeal of the $41.9 million judgment.

The result was reported as the largest contested jury verdict in Hernando County history and ranked third among all Florida verdicts for 2016. The National Law Journal placed it at No. 42 on its 2016 Top 100 Verdicts list, recognizing it among the largest civil jury awards in the country that year.