Restaurants sue the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board over wine handling fees

Two Pennsylvania restaurateurs are leading a proposed class action lawsuit in state Commonwealth Court that would force the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to repay millions in fees it collected from restaurants during the last three years on grounds that it improperly blocked them from obtaining wines directly from distributors.

The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday, followed a Commonwealth Court decision the previous Friday that PLCB had violated a 2016 law by not allowing wines that are not available in state stores to be delivered directly to restaurants from wine importers and distributors. The judge ordered the PLCB to comply with the law.

The 2016 law was also supposed to eliminate a handling fee that amounts to as much as $1.75 per 750-milliliter bottle after taxes, but the PLCB has continued charging it.

Because the PLCB failed to implement the required change, Bloomsday Cafe in Philadelphia and Log Cabin restaurant in Leola in Lancaster County, lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, had to continue paying not just the handling fee but also bear the costs of going to a state store to pick up the bottles that they ordered through the PLCB website under the state’s special-order system, according to the lawsuit.

One estimate put the total handling fees at $10 million or more since June 1, 2017. That’s when direct shipping was supposed to become part of the special-order system — which accounted for $112.8 million of the state system’s $2.5 billion in sales last year.

The proposed class action seeks the repayment of that money plus compensation for the costs of picking up orders from the store rather than having them delivered directly.

The PLCB did not immediately provide details on how much it has collected since 2017 in handling fees and declined to comment on the new lawsuit. “We will review and respond through appropriate legal channels, however we won’t comment publicly on active litigation,” PLCB spokesperson Elizabeth Brassell said.

Meanwhile, in his decision last week, Commonwealth Court Judge P. Kevin Brobson did not give the PLCB a deadline for implementing a special-orders procedure that bypasses state stores. “The Court is confident that PLCB has the resources and ingenuity to do so without unreasonable delay,” he wrote in his opinion.

Both suits were handled by lawyers for Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads.