Alan Gold's Discotheque will have its beer sales suspended for nine days - not 14 days - under an agreement the longtime gay bar reached in Hamilton County Chancery Court with the Chattanooga Beer Board.
The suspension takes effect from 8 a.m. Jan. 5 through 3 a.m. Jan. 14, said Assistant City Attorney Keith Reisman, who represents the beer board.
The beer board voted in early May to give Alan Gold's a 14-day suspension of beer sales starting May 18, because the bar at 1100 McCallie Ave. didn't report a Feb. 26 assault in which Tyler Taylor, a bouncer at the bar, got patron Billy Oliver on the ground and hit Oliver in the face until "his head was bouncing off the floor like a basketball," Chattanooga police Officer Cornelius Gaines told the beer board.
Oliver lost a tooth, had a face bone fractured and was left covered with blood, Gaines said.
Alan Gold's attorney, Johnny Houston, appealed in May before the 14-day suspension took effect.
Houston said the punishment was too severe, since it was the bar's first beer code violation in 28 years.
"It's like somebody getting caught public drunk, and they give him a year in jail - it's just too much," Houston said then.
He couldn't be reached for comment Monday.
Alan Gold's owner, Gary Milligan, told the beer board in May that the bar hadn't reported the assault and that the bar's bouncers aren't trained security guards.
Milligan said that while Taylor had worked in the past doing security at the bar, he wasn't doing so that night - a claim that was immediately disputed at the meeting by Chattanooga police officer John Collins and by Oliver's girlfriend.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or on Twitter @meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.