Spilled champagne in a bar on New Year's Eve leads to lawsuit

Talk about unexpected! On New Year's Eve, customers in an Alton bar rang in the new year with champagne toasts.

Unusual, isn't it?

It gets odder. Some tipsy revelers spilled a few ounces of their celebratory beverages on the floor. Can you imagine? In a crowded bar, where everyone's drinking and dancing on the biggest party night of the year?

Maybe the celebrators raised their toasts too swiftly or they got jostled, or maybe the New Madrid Fault was also in a festive mood that night. Whatever the cause, champagne sloshed about furiously in their glasses, overtopped the rims, and plummeted to the floor.

Spilled champagne was the last thing Tamara Cooper expected to find on the floor of a bar at midnight on New Year's Eve, but there it was.

Cooper was ringing in the new year at Bubby & Sissy's on Belle Street in Alton when she slipped on splattered bubbly and allegedly hurt her back.

Five months later, she filed suit in Madison County Circuit Court. She's seeking more than $50,000 in damages for the negligence that Bubby & Sissy's displayed in wantonly allowing customers to quaff champagne on New Year's Eve without legions of mop staff standing by to sop up any spills.

Negligent or not, Bubby & Sissy's was twice chosen by readers of the Alton Telegraph as the "Best Girls Night Out Bar in Madison County" -- quite an accomplishment for a bar that features female impersonators.

What drew Cooper there on New Year's Eve is uncertain. All we know for sure is that at midnight, after the drag show concluded, the bar offered free champagne toasts to all its customers, and one or more of those customers spilled some on the floor.

In addition to the lawsuit maybe legislation is needed, banning champagne toasts on New Year's Eve and other holidays, birthdays, weddings, etc.

One can't be too careful in our sue 'em over anything society.