Less than a week after Lisa Harter died in a one-car crash in May last year, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission launched an investigation into the bar where the man driving her home had been drinking for the previous five hours.

The agency, which is charged with policing businesses that serve alcohol, found the Flying Saucer Draft Emporium violated a state law against serving customers who are drunk.

The driver, Marine Staff Sgt. Marcos Serda, who was vomiting at the scene, had consumed enough beer to elevate his blood alcohol content to .13, nearly twice the legal limit, when police drew his blood four hours after he left the bar.

The TABC investigator wrote a stinging report.

“Serda very likely showed obvious signs of intoxication,” the report stated. “Yet (staff members) did nothing.” If the bar had followed its own policies, the report concluded, “this fatality would not have happened.”

But the rebuke did not match the outcome of the investigation: no penalty for the bar, which was protected by a little-known “safe harbor” state law that shields businesses from punishment in such cases. To win the protection, owners must show that wait staffers weren’t encouraged to overserve and that they attended a short alcohol awareness class.

Ten months after Harter’s death, police say another driver, Christopher Baldaramos, spent an evening drinking at the Flying Saucer before killing himself and San Antonio Police Officer Stephanie Brown when their vehicles crashed head-on along Interstate 35.

The highly publicized death of Brown has ignited concerns about the accountability of businesses that served drinks to intoxicated drivers. Police Chief William McManus plans to compile a database of where DWI suspects had their last drinks, and TABC has confirmed another investigation of the Flying Saucer.

The probe into Harter’s death may predict the outcome of the ongoing case, and it illuminates the difficulties of imposing penalties on businesses that serve drunken customers, even in the most extreme instances when they imperiled lives.

A review of TABC data for 2008 to 2010 shows bars and restaurants rarely lose their licenses in such cases, and 18 businesses in Texas have avoided penalties as a result of the law.

In Bexar County, some cases fell through the cracks and never were investigated by TABC, while others have languished for years without a resolution.

State laws also pose hurdles for families seeking financial damages from businesses that sold alcohol to drunken drivers. Plaintiffs must prove bars served “obviously intoxicated” patrons who posed a “clear danger” to themselves or others.

Glen Garey, general counsel for the Texas Restaurant Association, said it’s unfair to punish owners for irresponsible servers, and practiced drinkers can mask signs of intoxication.

“For a good operation that’s trying to control that, they need some kind of protection,” he said.

An attorney for the firm representing the Flying Saucer, Keith Strama, said the bar takes extra caution to prevent wait staff from serving anyone too many drinks. In addition to TABC classes, servers routinely undergo updated, in-house training, he said.

“It’s an issue that the Flying Saucer takes very seriously and the news deeply impacted everybody at this establishment,” Strama said.

TABC spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said the safe harbor law is aimed at protecting lives by encouraging businesses to train servers. The law also is designed to shield conscientious businesses from the actions of their employees.

“They can’t control what their employees do 100 percent of the time,” Beck said.

“We feel like the safe harbor law does what it’s supposed to do, which is to encourage employees to do the right thing.”

Others question the effectiveness of the law if businesses don’t face consequences for serving patrons who are drunk.

“If you know something’s wrong but it’s not going to cost you anything, you’re going to be more willing to let it fly,” said Ryan Harter, the ex-husband of Lisa Harter, who’s suing the Flying Saucer on behalf of their two young sons, ages 7 and 5. “It’s ridiculous that they got a slap on the wrist and now it happens again.”

Two-hour training

TABC began tracking businesses that served alcohol to drunken drivers in a formal statewide initiative in 1994. Called “source investigations” because they target the source of the alcohol, the efforts focus solely on cases involving serious injury or death.

In the past three years, the agency conducted about 600 source investigations of restaurants and bars and revoked alcohol licenses in 3 percent of the cases, according to TABC data. About 10 percent of establishments faced fines or a short-term suspension of a license.

In Bexar County, businesses also frequently avoided penalties. Of the 74 source investigations here since 2008, just one bar lost its license and eight others were handed a suspension or a fine.

TABC canceled the license of a karaoke bar called “Me and CA” after an off-the-clock employee, Juan Dominguez III, 26, left the bar in the 8300 block of Perrin Beitel in August 2009, crashed his motorcycle and died. His blood alcohol content was .23. A waitress who had been dating Dominguez told investigators he’d been drinking at the bar for more than four hours and asked to leave his motorcycle inside the bar. But his request was turned down, according to the waitress’s statement.

The TABC investigator found the bar, which since has changed ownership, violated a law against allowing drunken employees on the premises, and that the bar failed to post a policy for responsible alcohol sales.

In order for TABC to cancel a license and overcome the safe harbor protection, investigators must prove the bar violated the same law three times in a year.

In the absence of multiple violations, Beck, the TABC spokeswoman, said it’s difficult for the agency to convince administrative judges to revoke a permit, which can cost up to $6,500 for the first two years.

“As a general rule, we do what we can to cancel a permit when there’s a fatality,” she said. “We get into the hearings and they don’t want to always put that much responsibility on the business owner who might not have been there at the time.”

Bars and restaurants can win the safe harbor protection if all the servers completed a TABC-certified training class where they learn to spot the signs of intoxication. The class is two hours long and can be taken online.

Although state law allows employees to be charged with a misdemeanor violation for serving an intoxicated person, records show the cases are few. Since 2008, five servers in Bexar County have faced misdemeanor criminal charges stemming from source investigations. Four of the cases remain pending.

The data also show the safe harbor law has been a powerful and widely used defense. About 18 businesses in Texas successfully stanched penalties stemming from source investigations in the last three years — nearly as many as the 20 businesses that lost their permits.

In the case of the Flying Saucer, a popular hangout on Huebner Road near Interstate 10, agents found evidence that Marcos Serda, 27, consumed nearly three-quarters of a gallon of beer before flipping his Lexus on U.S. 90 near Hunt Lane, about 20 miles from the bar.

Dressed in a Marine uniform, Serda met Harter, 26, at the bar around 9 p.m. and began ordering rounds for their table of seven near the front of the bar, which has a niche in specialty and imported beers.

According to a copy of his bill that night and the recollection of the waitress who served him, Serda drank a 22-ounce Breckenridge Agave Wheat and then two more pints of the same beer. He also had a Full Sail Session Black beer and two 15-ounce Pinkus Organic Hefe-Weizens.

The waitress, who declined to talk about the case, emphasized in her statement to investigators that Serda didn’t seem drunk. In her own defense, she noted that he periodically asked for water, drank slowly and ate some spinach dip.

But the attorney handling the lawsuit against the bar said he believes Serda drank more beers not reflected on his tab. The idea that Serda bought every round at the table without anyone returning the favor “doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Someone else would have bought drinks.”

The exact number of beers served by the bar also is in dispute in the pending TABC investigation of officer Brown’s death. Police said the driver, Christopher Baldaramos, 31, drank 13 pints at the Flying Saucer and two more pints at the Oak Hills Tavern in the South Texas Medical Center. The owner of the Flying Saucer said Baldaramos and two companions split a total of 10 pints.

Either way, Embry said the connection of two deaths to the bar raises red flags about problems that extend beyond individual servers and causes doubts about whether the safe harbor law works.

“If there ever was a time when (the Flying Saucer) should have been watching people carefully, it was now,” he said. “Just because they check the right box and provide the training to wait staff, that doesn’t mean there’s not a problem at this bar.”

But the Flying Saucer isn’t the only bar that continues to operate after TABC linked it to multiple deaths.

Fox and Hound

In March 2009, Cynthia Reyes, a 22-year old teaching student at Northwest Vista College, met a group of friends at the Fox and Hound English Pub and Grille.

Reyes spent the night drinking at the bar and left when it closed at 2 a.m., according to a lawsuit filed by her family. Less than two miles after she pulled away from the bar on Vance Jackson Road, she plowed into a utility pole and died.

Two months later, on May 3, Nadia Rahina Maharaj and her husband Louis Sifuentes Jr., went to the bar around 4:30 p.m. The couple, who were newly wed, drank for about the next five hours, together consuming 16 pints of beer, three rum and cokes and two shots of tequila, according to the bar bill.

Heading home, the two made it about three miles down Interstate 10 in the eastbound lanes before Maharaj veered into another vehicle, hit several crash support barrels and then smashed into an 18-wheeler. Sifuentes, 29, died from his injuries.

Three hours after the wreck, Maharaj’s blood alcohol registered 0.19.

The attorney for the Fox and Hound, James Cousar, said the bar imposes strict safeguards against overserving.

“Like any business, there’s a potential for human error, but certainly the corporation’s policies are some of the best in Texas,” he said.

It wasn’t until a month after Sifuentes died that TABC learned about the cases and started investigating the bar in June 2009.

Today, the investigations are being handled together and remain pending before an administrative law judge, who has granted two continuances in the case. The bar is invoking the safe harbor law in its defense.

Records show it’s not uncommon for cases to sit for months or years without a resolution at the State Office of Administrative Hearings. About a dozen Bexar County cases involving possible violations prior to October 2010 now are pending, according to TABC data.

Complaints ignored

The lag time between Reyes’ death and the start of the TABC probe also demonstrates that, with no system in place to ensure the agency learns about an incident, investigations can be haphazard.

“Sometimes the local police departments don’t contact us and we don’t investigate every case,” TABC spokeswoman Beck said. “It’s really dependent on personal relationships” between the agencies.

Although it’s impossible to track how many cases TABC did not investigate when bars served deadly drunken drivers, advocates and plaintiffs attorneys said they frequently handle cases where the agency played no role.

Melissa Montgomery, manager of victims’ services for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, estimated that in 40 percent of the cases she handles, TABC did not investigate.

In some instances, she said she pressed the agency to open investigations but none ever came.

“When they know a bar is involved, it should automatically be investigated,” Montgomery said. “It’s incredibly frustrating.”

In some fatal cases, police officers included in their reports the names of bars that served drunken-driving suspects, and no TABC investigation followed. Among the bars not investigated was the now-defunct Centerfolds Gentleman’s Club, where 21-year-old Leslie A. Subirias had been trying out as a dancer in August 2006.

Subirias left the club on Brewster Street and was headed west on Loop 410 South near the Texas 16 exit when her pickup veered across the median. The truck careened across the eastbound lanes before launching into the air and landing atop a Ford Escort headed east on an access road.

The impact killed Ricardo Zamarripa, 14, and Matthew Jimenez, 7, who were on their way home from a day at the swimming pool. Subirias was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Christi Zamarripa, Ricardo’s mother, believes both drivers and bars should pay a price in such cases.

Last year, she lost her only other child, Pedro, 23, to another drunken-driving suspect. Without stiffer consequences for those who provide alcohol to drivers, Zamarripa believes nothing will change.

To raise awareness, she and her husband placed signs on the back windshields of their vehicles. The signs list the names of both sons and the dates they died.

But recently, Zamarripa’s husband told her he wanted to take down his sign.

“Why?” she asked.

He told her he wasn’t sure the signs were working.