Bar Owner Tried to Enforce Smoking Ban, Judge Rules

A judge Wednesday threw out two of the three counts against a Burbank bar owner accused of encouraging patrons to defy the state’s restaurant smoking ban, saying that 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 penalized more than $800 on all three counts, which Burbank city inspectors brought against his Crazy Jack’s Country Bar and Grill.

Tavares has been rallying bar owners across Southern California to resist the smoking ban.

“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 by giving them ashtrays.

However, ruling in a stern voice, 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 Kalkin, 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.

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

But under questioning by the defense, the city employees admitted that they had not bothered to take 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 from discarded butts on its carpets, bar employees began supplying ashtrays to smokers who signed a registry acknowledging that they had been informed of the law and were not willing to comply with it, witnesses said.