French bartender jailed after customer who downed 56 shots dies

Renaud Prudhomme had to be rushed to the hospital after breaking the bar's record of most consumed shots

FRANCE: A French bartender received a suspended jail sentence after being convicted of manslaughter for letting a man down 56 shots during a drinking contest that killed him.

Renaud Prudhomme, 56, broke the in-house shots record last October at Starter, a bar in the central French town of Clermont-Ferrand.

The battender admitted that he made an error in advertising the shots record and that displaying the shots on a notice board encouraged the victim to go too far. After breaking the in-house record at the bar in central Clermont-Ferrand, Renaud Prudhomme died in hospital the following day.

Prudhomme had spent the evening with his daughter and some friends who helped him home in his intoxicated state, but they soon had to ring emergency services.

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He was given a four-month suspended sentence by a local court on Wednesday and banned from working in a bar for a year.

His lawyer said he would appeal the ruling.

“It’s a decision guided by emotion and the unconscious desire to set an example,” said Renaud Portejoie, who had called for the case to be thrown out.

The bartender’s lawyer, Portejoie, said that his client bore no responsibility, and that the man’s daughter had pushed him to break the record when he had established respiratory and alcohol abuse problems.

“We can’t ask every customer who buys alcohol to present their medical certificates,” he said.

Antoine Portal, a lawyer for Prudhomme’s daughter, denied she was at the bar at the time of the drinking competition.

“My client is relieved by this decision,” he said of the ruling forbidding Crepin from working as a bartender.

“We want to remind some professionals that it is illegal to serve alcohol to clients who are in an advanced state of inebriation.”

The article originally appeared on the Guardian