“Aggressive” landlord fined for dragging football fan out of pub

Thursday 27 September 2018

A local pub landlord has been fined over £1,000 after dragging a football fan out of his bar for watching a Champions League match without buying a drink.

Earl Grey pub manager of nine years Gerard Joseph Kelly (51) admitted in the Magistrate's Court yesterday that he “overreacted” to patrons not buying drinks while they watched the match back in April.

The court heard that Kelly approached a group of people who had come to the First Tower-based bar to the football game and checked whether all of them had bought drinks. When he realised that some of them hadn’t, he became “aggressive” and said: “Get a f*****g drink or get out.”

Pictured: The Earl Grey pub, which Gerard Kelly has managed for nine years and where the assault took place. (Google Maps)

Kelly told the pubgoers that he had paid £650 for the football match to be screened and that viewers needed to buy drinks so that he could cover those costs.

When one of them said that he was the designated driver and therefore wasn’t drinking, Kelly replied: “I don’t f*****g care if you’re driving – get a f*****g drink or get out.”

As the argument escalated, Kelly grabbed the man’s arm and began to drag him through the group of people to the middle of the pub. A number of onlookers tried to separate the two men.

Pictured: Gerard Kelly appeared in the Magistrate's Court this morning and was fined for dragging a designated driver out of his pub for not buying a drink.

In the fray, Kelly managed to rip the man’s jacket, which Court was told he had received as a Christmas gift. 

Kelly was represented by Advocate Estelle Burns who said her client “accept[s] that he overreacted and that he made an error of judgment.” Advocate Burns also assured Court that “this will never happen again."

Having listened to the facts of the case, Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris, presiding, addressed Kelly: “As a licensee, you are responsible for the good order of your establishment." He added that licensees must therefore “deal with” issues “in any way [they] see fit at the time, but clearly physically pulling someone is not an acceptable way.”

Assistant Magistrate Harris said that Kelly, who has an otherwise “unblemished record”, had “let [him]self down with this behaviour” before handing down a financial penalty of £1,000 for the assault and a compensation order of £150 to pay for the damage to the victim’s jacket.