Gaby Scanlon was out celebrating her 18th birthday when she drank a liquid nitrogen and jagermeister cocktail. You know the type, it’s a novelty concoction that gives the appearance of a smoking drink. And it left Scanlon “close to death”.
“I turned to the man and asked if it was OK to drink. He said ‘yes’. Smoke was coming from my nose and mouth. Straight away I knew something was not right. My stomach expanded. The manager said nothing about waiting for it to die down,” Scanlon told the court.
Scanlon was right, something was going very wrong in her body, particularly her stomach.
“Immediately on consuming the drink she was taken violently ill, retching and vomiting and smoking from her nose and mouth. The liquid nitrogen itself is a dangerous product,” Prosecutor Barry Berlin told the court.
Now, almost three years later, Oscar’s Wine Bar, the Lancashire bar that served her the drink, has been fined around $215,779 after admitting it had not ensured the shot was safe for consumption and no risk assessment had been carried out into its dangers, reports The Guardian.
The company pleaded guilty to one count of failing in the duty of an employer to ensure the safety of persons not in its employment.
The Nitro-Jagermeister cocktail used liquid nitrogen, which is often used to freeze warts, to create a cloud of smoke in the glass. And according to the BBC, while drinks using the substance are not illegal, physicists advise that the liquid must completely evaporate before the drink is safe for consumption.
It also emerged that the bar had received a letter months before the accident from a health and safety officer who expressed concern about the drink but nothing was done about it.
