22.17.2 Taverns.

• Jurisdiction: Arizona

22.17.2 Taverns. A tavern keeper owes his patrons the duty to exercise reasonable care in preventing reasonably foreseeable physical assault upon them.¹⁵⁶ This includes the obligation to use reasonable care to protect patrons from injury caused by others in the bar.¹⁵⁷ The test is whether a reasonable person would recognize danger or harm about to befall the plaintiff.¹⁵⁸

Thus, there was no negligence when a barkeep failed to protect the plaintiff from assault after a 30-second gap between a spilled beer and loud, but not “unusually abusive” words, and the actual assault.¹⁵⁹ In another case, the tavern keeper was not liable when an assailant knifed an innocent third party as the assailant was leaving the bar expecting a fight with other persons with whom he had just had a scuffle in the bar; the court highlighted that the tavern keeper had no knowledge that the other persons were outside such that there would be a continued disturbance.¹⁶⁰ A tavern keeper was liable to a patron shot in the parking lot by another patron known to the tavern keeper to be a “troublemaker” and who had been kicked out of the bar for fighting before.¹⁶¹

A tavern owner may be found negligent where the...