Beer drinkers offered variety by the ounce

New laws that took effect Monday also deal with "payday loans,'' adoptions, deadbeat parents and other issues.

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 2, 2001

TALLAHASSEE -- Beer drinkers will be able to hoist bottles and cans of all shapes and sizes under one of several new laws that took effect Monday.

Other new laws deal with adoptions, "payday loans," inmates who believe DNA evidence will prove their innocence, deadbeat parents and reckless drivers.

The beer law lifts a ban on cans and bottles in sizes other than 8, 12, 16 and 32 ounces but keeps in place a prohibition of sizes over 32 ounces.

It's an important consumer law, according to the director of the Florida Public Interest Research Group.

"It will increase competition, which is always a good thing," Mark Ferrulo said.

At the Beverage Castle near the University of South Florida in Tampa, students and beer connoisseurs alike use the store's drive-through to buy everything from Budweiser to Hacker-Pschorr, an imported German beer that goes for $10 a six-pack.

Store employee Dale Harris said that right now, the Beverage Castle carries only one oversize beverage, a 22-ounce bottle of Cider Jack.

The new law probably won't increase the Beverage Castle's variety of beers -- the slogan on the outside of the building says "Over 400 Imported Beers Sold Here" -- but it will give customers the ability to buy larger sizes.

"A Heineken 22-ounce bottle, for instance," Harris said.

"I don't think there's going to be a big demand for large, 24-ounce cans," said Terry Arnold, the beer manager for the Fine Wine and Spirits Warehouse on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa.

Arnold said that they simply don't have room in their coolers for more beer.

As for the other new laws, Ferrulo called the "payday" loan law a mixed bag when it comes to protecting people in such desperate need of money that they get 14-day loans with annual interest rates ranging from 400 to 1,000 percent.

Payday lenders let people write a check for a fee, then hold the check until the borrower's next payday.

Ferrulo said the new law implements a system to limit people to one loan at a time and to help keep them from defaulting and getting trapped on a treadmill of debt. The law also caps the fee for the transactions at 10 percent and limits the loan amounts to $500.

But Ferrulo said the law still allows lenders to charge rates outrageous and usurious enough to "make a loan shark blush."

Another new law may help consumers by cutting car insurance costs.

The measure was a response to a statewide grand jury report that exposed rampant fraud in the personal injury protection insurance Floridians are required to have.

The law requires licenses and new recordkeeping rules for some health care clinics in an effort to cut down on billing fraud.

It also puts a new cap on fees for brokers who line up expensive medical tests for accident victims. Such tests in the past sometimes cost insurance companies as much as three times what other customers paid for the procedure because of fraud.

"It's one of the most important auto insurance bills since the '70s," said Sam Miller, spokesman for the Florida Insurance Council.

Other new laws:

Make mothers putting babies up for adoption wait 48 hours before giving up their parental rights and set a two-year deadline on legal challenges based on fraud.

Establish criminal penalties of up to five years in prison and allow suits for double the value of lost crops destroyed by trespassers such as "ecological terrorists" protesting bioengineering.

Give prisoners a better chance to clear themselves through DNA testing.

Increase the maximum penalty from one year to five years in prison for parents who owe more than $5,000 in child support for more than a year.

Delete the primary barrier to criminal prosecution of deadbeat parents, establishing mandatory fines and imprisonment periods for the first three misdemeanor convictions and making a fourth violation a felony.

Expand the scope of a law banning sexual misconduct by guards in prisons and jails.

Make it a felony for prisoners to throw their bodily fluids onto guards.

Require groups asking for charitable donations to include their registration number and data on what percentage of the donations collected is kept by the solicitor and what percentage goes to the charity.

Increase the penalty for reckless driving that causes injuries or damages property and create the crime of "aggressive careless driving."

Provide "good Samaritan" protection for businesses that keep "automated external defibrillators," designed for nonmedical personnel to treat people who suffer heart attacks.

- Times staff writer Tamara Lush contributed to this report.

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