Barkeep Savors Taste of Victory in Smoking Case

A judge Wednesday threw out two of the three counts against a bar owner accused of encouraging patrons to defy the state’s restaurant smoking ban, saying the barkeep sincerely tried to enforce a “very confusing law.”

Jack Tavares, the first bar owner to challenge the 5-month-old law, was found guilty only of smoking a cigarette in the bar himself, for which he was fined $270.

He could have been hit with more than $800 in penalties on all three counts, which Burbank city inspectors brought against his Crazy Jack’s Country Bar & Grill.

Tavares has been rallying bar owners across Southern California to resist the smoking ban, and says he is supported by nearly 100 bar owners from the South Bay to Burbank and Gardena to Hollywood.

“It’s not the ban, it’s a rights issue,” said Tavares after his partial victory. “They’ve gone too far telling us how to run our business and what we’re supposed to do.”

Assistant City Atty. Michael Many argued in court that the bar’s employees openly allowed customers to flout the law by failing to eject smokers and giving them ashtrays.

However, Municipal Judge Alan S. Kalkin said no evidence was presented showing that Crazy Jack’s employees sought to avoid adhering to the law, which supporters say is meant to protect the health of bar employees.

“They tried to comply with the law and there’s no evidence in this trial that they didn’t,” said the judge, who added that he found it “a very confusing law.” As written, the state code “allowed people to wink at the law,” he said.

Outside court, defense attorney James Lindeman expressed satisfaction with the judge’s remarks and the outcome of the case, comparing his client’s penalty to a traffic ticket.

“He’s paying a fine because he came in [to the bar] smoking, not because he permitted customers to smoke,” he said. “This establishment did exactly what they thought the law required.”

The prosecutor refused to comment after the three-hour hearing, which continued after the court’s traditional 4:30 p.m. closing time and featured a runaway mouse that briefly interrupted arguments as it scampered around the court.

Witnesses for Burbank, including city inspectors, testified they saw several customers smoking at the bar, located in the 4300 block of Magnolia Boulevard.

Two of the alleged infractions occurred in January and another on St. Patrick’s Day, according to witnesses.

But under questioning by the defense, the city employees admitted they had not taken the names of those they said defied the ban. Defense witnesses told the judge that regular bar patrons began openly defying the smoking ban about a week after it went into effect Jan. 1.

Fearing trouble from unruly patrons and damage to carpets from discarded butts, bar employees began supplying ashtrays to smokers who signed a registry acknowledging they had been informed of the law and were not willing to comply with it, witnesses said.

“They were insisting it was their right to smoke,” Crazy Jack’s manager, Kami Caudillo, said on the stand. “I prepared the book to prove that we complied with the law.”

“It wasn’t a petition [so much] as an objection,” added bar customer Sue Ann Stacey.

Before the trial, Tavares contended his business dropped 35% immediately after the new law went into effect and said it rose slightly in the months after that, when customers could resume smoking if they insisted on doing so.

The prosecutor suggested that Crazy Jack’s had economic reasons for letting customers puff away because of the admission by defense witnesses that 90% of the bar’s customers smoked.