(Beveragelaw) - In a huge victory for common sense interpretation of the law and a reaffirmation of reasonableness by the California ABC Appeals Board, several decisions in favor of wineries (Hinman & Carmichael LLP clients) who participated in the 2013 BottleRock festival have clarified the muddy waters of tied-house issues in California.  The ABC Appeals Board’s opinions reversing findings of violations of ABC statutes relating to indirect ownership of retail licenses and sponsorships of festivals, and the exchange of goods for promotional consideration, pave the way for a more rational ABC approach to the tied-house laws in the future.

The 2013 Festival and the ABC – the Backstory

In 2013 a group of promoters in Napa invented the music festival known as BottleRock. BottleRock Festivals LLC (BRF) signed up wineries from Napa and Sonoma (as well as a major brewer) as sponsors. The festival featured three days of music and wineries presenting their wines to festival attendees in tents at the Napa Valley Fairgrounds. Before the festival the BRF promoters met with the ABC and showed ABC the sponsorship contracts (which provided for venues for after-parties, including the Uptown Theatre; wine being contributed to the artist’s gift bags for promotional purposes; wine being contributed for charitable auction donations in connection with the event; as well as generous ticket packages and hospitality tents for the sponsors). BRF booked the acts, publicized the festival and worked with a caterer to have wine poured in the hospitality tents under a permit issued by the ABC, which the sponsoring wineries considered to be ABC approval of the event.

Almost immediately after the 2013 festival concluded, BRF had financial problems and declared bankruptcy. About that time an ABC investigator trolling the internet came across a story that connected the BRF principals to the Uptown Theatre through a real estate investment trust that owned a minority (21%) interest in the LLC that owned the Uptown (this is called an indirect ownership interest). None of the wineries knew any details about the interest of the promoters in the Uptown, and the chain of indirect ownership could not have been discovered had someone using the ABC public records looked up the Uptown’s ownership. That is because only direct ownership interests show up on the ABC public databases.

“Gotcha” declared the investigator!  This, he concluded, was all the ABC needed to bring a case against ALL of the producer-licensed sponsors.  He theorized that, because the “after-parties” were at the Uptown (a licensed venue) and BRF revenue (which may or may not have come from sponsorship funds from the wineries; no one could prove this one way or another) was used to pay for those parties, the wineries had indirectly provided a “thing of value” to the Uptown in violation of the tied house laws. The ABC filed the accusations on that theory.

The ABC Accusations, the Hearings and the Appeal Dismissing the Accusation

Of the approximately two dozen wineries and other suppliers indicted by the ABC in 2014, most settled for a fine, a license suspension for 10 to 15 days or probation for a year.  However, many wineries felt they had done nothing wrong and were determined to defend themselves. These wineries went to hearings at which the allegations in the accusations were challenged. There was no substantive dispute over the facts; the real dispute was over the legal standards to apply to the facts. The result after the hearing (the ABC Director was the decision maker) was a conviction based on the ABC’s legal theory that neither knowledge of a tied relationship, nor intent to violate the law via that relationship, was necessary to finding a violation.

Our clients appealed to the ABC Appeals Board, which has jurisdiction over the ABC and the power to reverse ABC decisions. The reversals by the Appeals Board sent a clear message to the ABC.

The most important result from these cases is the publication of a refined standard of conduct that will now be required for the ABC to find a licensee guilty of a tied house violation related to a thing of value.

The lessons from these cases will benefit every licensee in this state.

Just as important (and perhaps more important from a day to day operational perspective), the Appeals Board specifically found that alcoholic beverages bartered for promotional consideration (specifically, the wine provided for the artists in their gift bags) do not violate the Section 25600 prohibition on “premiums, gifts or free goods.”  This provides enormous relief to those wineries who use wine for trade, provide wine to wine writers and who provide wine to events in return for promotional consideration.  The board found that “promotional consideration” was in fact “consideration” and nothing had been given away for free.

While this application of the California Civil Code definition of “consideration” to the ABC Act prohibitions is heartening, licensees are cautioned that use of this privilege requires careful adherence to proper invoicing and bookkeeping procedures.

The BottleRock festival (under different promoters) proceeded in 2014 and 2015 (and will soon happen again in 2016) under the aegis of special legislation applying to the festival itself and to the Napa Fairgrounds.  Unfortunately that legislation does not apply to other music festivals in other places in the state.  However, because ABC Appeals Board decisions do apply throughout the state we can safely say that the music now lives!