Atty. Gen. in N.Y. to Sue Delivery Firms Over Liquor Shipments
Federal Express Corp., United Parcel Service of America Inc. and Airborne Express face lawsuits in connection with delivering beer, wine and liquor to minors in New York, that state’s attorney general said Friday.
Atty. Gen. Dennis Vacco said he notified the three companies, along with 12 wine and liquor distributors, that he plans to sue them in connection with violating the state’s liquor laws. The notice resulted from an undercover investigation of illegal telephone and Internet sales of alcohol to minors, he said.
FedEx, UPS, Airborne and the mostly California-based distributors made deliveries of alcoholic beverages without checking that recipients were old enough to receive them, Vacco said. Mail-order companies, many of them operating on the Internet, illegally ship as much as $100 million a year of alcoholic beverages into New York, costing the state $15 million a year in lost tax revenue, he said.
“Teenagers, who can’t legally buy a can of beer at the corner store, can get virtually any type of alcoholic beverage delivered right to their doorstep,” Vacco said in a statement.
The firms each face fines of as much as $500 per delivery, Vacco said.
Memphis-based FedEx and Atlanta-based UPS require that packages containing alcohol be labeled and receive an adult signature before delivery, officials at the companies said. Jennifer Peacor, a spokeswoman at Seattle-based Airborne, said the firm does not specify which packages contain alcohol and does not require adult signatures for them.
All three companies declined to comment on Vacco’s legal notice, saying they hadn’t yet seen it.
Vacco said New York investigators, working with teenage volunteers as young as 14, arranged to buy 11 cases of wine, two shipments of beer and a case of scotch.
In one instance, the delivery company left a package of alcohol with a minor after an underage neighbor, 20, signed for it. Vacco didn’t name the delivery company cited in that case.
The small but growing number of companies offering direct-to-home delivery of the wines and beers they advertise on the Internet say the anti-booze campaign is an attempt by liquor wholesalers to put them out of business.
“They are used to getting their cut of every ounce of alcohol that comes into a state,” said Jim Lowe, a spokesman for Hogshead Beer Cellars, a specialty-beer-of-the-month club based in Greensboro, N.C. “Wholesalers are the ones completely behind this.”
The organizers of Americans for Responsible Alcohol Access acknowledge their effort is funded largely by liquor wholesalers. They say it is also supported by “safety-minded organizations.”
John Hinman, a San Francisco attorney who represents many wineries and brewers of specialty beers, said: “The whole issue is economic protection of the monopoly system of alcohol distribution that exists in this country. That’s what this is all about.”
The distribution firms that received legal notices, Vacco said, include Napa Valley Winery Exchange and California Wine Club.
