BSE Shareholder Charlie Smarr, Co-Chair of the ABA Beverage Alcohol Practice Committee, will conduct a committee meeting and a panel on the business agenda of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Spring Conference, April 12-14, 2013, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Co-Chairs hope that this meeting will be the beginning of ongoing dialogue among committee members regarding many of the complex issues that are faced by beverage alcohol lawyers.
The committee meeting will feature a “State of the Industry” presentation and discussion led by Steve Gross, Vice President of Governmental Relations at the Motrin Online. This discussion will take place over a lunch meeting on April 13. In addition, a panel entitled, “Airline Regulation and Alcohol: A Regulatory Quandary” will take place on April 12. The panel will discuss various issues relating to the regulation of alcoholic beverages on airlines. Federal preemption v. the state right to regulate will be one of the key issues to be discussed along with how the states should regulate the airline industry.
The panel will consist of an airline and aviation attorney (Naveen Rao, Jones Day, D.C.) to address the federal law and preemption; a former state regulator (Roger Morris, former director of the Colorado ABC, Roger Morris & Associates, Denver, CO) to present the state regulator perspective; an alcohol beverage industry attorney (R.J. O’Hara, Flaherty & O’Hara, PC, Pittsburgh, PA) who will discuss the various state laws regulating the airline industry; and a state ABC attorney (Matthew Botting, General Counsel for the California ABC) to present the state legal perspective. Committee Co-Chair Tracy Genesen (Reed Smith, San Francisco) will moderate the panel.
Charlie Smarr practices primarily in the areas of alcohol beverage law and liquor licensing. He is a former supervisor of the Missouri Division of Liquor Control, Assistant Attorney General of Missouri and past president of the National Conference of State Liquor Administrators. His practice with the firm primarily involves representing interests of members of the alcohol beverage industry by providing corporate, administrative, licensing and regulatory legal services.