El Chico Corp. v. Poole

In El Chico Corp. v. Poole, 732 S.W.2d 306, 313, 30 Tex. Sup. Ct. J. 469 (Tex. 1987), the plaintiff was required to prove only that the beverage server "knew or should have known" that the individual was intoxicated. See id. at 314. In El Chico, there was no question the intoxicated driver had left the provider's establishment only moments before the accident occurred. The evidence in that case established this fact. Id. at 308, 314. The El Chico court based its holding--that the driver's "apparent intoxication" at the scene of the accident raised a fact issue as to whether the employees knew or should have known of his intoxication--on the temporal proximity of the accident to the driver's leaving the defendant's establishment. 732 S.W.2d at 315. The court mentioned that the intoxicated driver also had blacked-out. Id. at 308.