I disagree with this. What about the guy that gets a snootful BEFORE coming to your bar, has one drink, then leaves and takes out a family going to Disney? (that really happened)? Do you blame the bartender who was unaware that the guy was drinking elsewhere and was able to hold it better?
This is a terrible idea..
A lot of alcoholics are really good at "maintaining" when they go order a drink. They'll pull themselves together enough to not look as wasted as they truly are.
Or the guy who mixes it with other drugs.
In Texas, all folks who serve alcohol are required to take training in, and pass a test on, recognizing folks who have had too much to drink and the requirement to quit serving them.
If someone was so drunk that they had trouble standing on their own, then yes, she should have cut them off well before that - at least under the Texas rules. I have no idea what the California law is on serving drunks.
I would expect then the defense was that only one drink was served and that observation didn't show the person to be drunk. I worked with an alcoholic that could put away a vast quantity of beer and just talking to him he never appeared blitzed.
There isn't enough information here, we don't know if he was sitting at the bar an she served him all the drinks in which case she would be culpable, this is not something new. Or was he sitting at a table and a waitperson bringing him the drinks, in which case I think she would have a defense.
Either way I think it highly unlikely she would recall one person from two years ago. It is interesting that she was working unlawfully using someone else's social, which begs the question is she an illegal just taking the bartender job Americans don't want?