Court of Petty Appeals: Symposium on Law Student Drinking Habits (SLSDH) v. Crozet Pizza

Symposium on Law Student Drinking Habits (SLSDH) 

v. 

Crozet Pizza 

78 U.Va. 24 (2026) 

Pudvan, J., delivers the opinion of the Court, in which Berklich and Wu, C.J.J., and Vanger, Lawson, Boatright, Lozada, and Koeppel, J.J., join.  

Moore, J., concurs in part and dissents in part. 

This Court has seen many things in its storied existence. We have adjudicated cases with grace, intellectual rigor, and, on average, one reference to Tolkien per opinion. But what comes before us today tests even this Court's considerable patience, not with the defendant, but with the plaintiffs and their deeply unserious approach to the concept of a bar tab. 

The facts developed at trial are as follows. On three separate occasions—February 7, March 20, and March 28—representatives of the Symposium on Law Student Drinking Habits, a recognized student organization of the University of Virginia School of Law, entered into promotional agreements with Crozet Pizza, a beloved establishment known primarily for its exceptional pizza and its historic willingness to suffer law students. Under the terms of each agreement, Crozet Pizza would offer the following promotions exclusively for the law students in attendance: $3 shooters, $2 Green Tea Shots, $0.35 draft beers, and, incredulously, $0.05 sniffs of ethanol.  

On each of the three occasions in question, Crozet Pizza declined to honor these promotions upon the law students’ arrival. The jury, after deliberating for an impressively short forty-five minutes, returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs. Crozet Pizza now moves to set aside the jury verdict and for a new trial pursuant to Petty Rule of Civil Procedure 12, which states that “any verdict that offends the conscience of the Court, the reasonable bartender, or basic economics shall be vacated upon motion, or upon the Court's own initiative if we feel like it.” We grant the motion. 

I. Jurisdiction 

Jurisdiction in this Court is a matter of creative statutory interpretation. We note that the Petty Rules of Civil Procedure vest jurisdiction in this Court over “any and all disputes arising from the intersection of legal education, poor financial planning, and the audacity of youth.” Albino Squirrel v. UVA Football Fans, 78 U.Va. 7 (2025). This case sits as comfortably within that jurisdiction as a beer sits in an ice-cold pint glass. 

II. The Motion to Set Aside the Verdict 

Before turning to the merits, we must address the precedent governing promotional beverage disputes at law school neighborhood establishments. The controlling case is O'Shaughnessy's Irish Pub & Grill v. The Entire 2L Class of an Unnamed Chicago Law School, 42 F. Supp. of Common Sense 1 (N.D. Ill. 2019). In that case, plaintiffs entered into a promotional agreement offering $1 beers on the condition that the class, collectively, tipped at a rate no lower than 18%. The class tipped a collective $8.17 on a $746 tab, leaving the bartender—a single mother of three named Deborah—with enough to purchase approximately one-fourth of a tank of gas. The court found for the establishment, holding that “no promotional agreement survives contact with a group of people who are simultaneously the most educated and the least self-aware cohort in any given zip code.” O'Shaughnessy's at 7. This Court finds that reasoning persuasive and applicable. 

The jury’s verdict rests on the theory that Crozet Pizza breached its promotional agreements with the plaintiffs. The theory is appealing in its simplicity, much like a 1L’s understanding of the rule against perpetuities before a professor starts posing hypos. But the record developed at trial reveals a far more complicated picture—one that this Court cannot, in good conscience, permit to stand. 

First, the evidence at trial established that the promotions at issue were negotiated by the SLSDH on behalf of the student body at large. Evidence presented at trial included a chain of GroupMe messages in which the SLSDH assured Crozet Pizza that “we'll definitely drink enough to make it worth it,” followed immediately by a separate message to the student body reading: “Free event, come for the Pizza, the bar's doing drink specials but honestly just get water, it's fine." 

This Court finds this evidence deeply troubling. It suggests a conspiracy to induce Crozet Pizza into promotional agreements that the organizers had no genuine intention of honoring through actual consumption. We do not reach the question of fraud at this stage. For purposes of this motion, it is sufficient to note that this is not the behavior of a plaintiff entitled to equitable relief. See In Re Everyone Who Has Ever Said "We'll Pregame and Then Go Out,” 78 U.Va. 3 (2018) (holding that the promise to drink later does not cure the failure to drink now). 

Second, the evidence at trial evinced a pattern of tipping behavior on the part of law students that this Court can only describe as a cry for help. The record reflects that across the three events, law students collectively tipped an average of 7.3%. One attendee at the February 7th event left a tip consisting of a handwritten note reading “Thank you! Great vibes, you should go to law school!” This Court has reviewed this note and the circumstances. The bartender should not go to law school. The bartender is doing fine. The bartender would like 20%. 

Third, we return to the promotions themselves. The plaintiff's own exhibits establish the following price schedule: $3 shooters. $2 Green Tea Shots. $0.35 draft beers. Five cents for a big sniff of ethanol. This Court sat with that last item for a long time. We consulted Black's Law Dictionary. We consulted the Restatement (Third) of the Law of Liquor. We phoned a friend. None of these resources helped us understand why anyone would want a big sniff of ethanol at any price. 

But what troubles this Court most is this: even at these prices, the law students still weren't drinking. The record reflects that alcohol consumption across the three events averaged 1.3 drinks per person, including the 3Ls, who account for a disproportionate share of that figure. The remaining attendees, the Court is informed, mostly “stuck to water,” “had an early morning," or were “sober." Respectfully, this is not Crozet Pizza's problem. 

III. Remedy 

We remand for a new trial. On remand, the trial court is instructed to apply the O'Shaughnessy's standard, to admit evidence of the Bar Czar communications, and to take judicial notice of the tip average. We further hold that Crozet Pizza is entitled to seek the following equitable relief: a written apology, a commitment from SLSDH to tip no less than 20% at future events, the retirement of the $0.05 big sniff promotion, and a prohibition on the phrase “it's not about the money, it's the principle” from any party whose legal education costs approximately $80,000 per year. 

It is so ordered. 

Moore, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part. 

The majority is to be rightfully and loudly lauded for their respect of the precedent Court of the same from the Tolkienian reference to the citation of Albino Squirrel v. UVA Football Fans, 78 U.Va. 7 (2025). Additionally, the interests of the proprietors of Crozet Pizza ought correctly to be so prioritized over the libation-indulging Symposium, and the Court hereby receives my concurrence in the judgment to the same. After all, the same justice fully supports the tendency of the State-Times to equate “the welfare of Standard Oil Company with that of the state [Louisiana] as a whole.” T. Harry Williams, Huey Long 362 (1969). While the State-Times wrote in reference to the Standard Oil Company and Louisiana, the applicability of the precedent to Crozet Pizza is undeniable. 

While the allusion to Albino Squirrel merits respect, a reference to the dissent would have had a superior possessory interest to gestæððignesse with the present case. The majority in that aforementioned case similarly sought to place the pecuniary punishment upon the population least prepared to pay up. Rather than repeating the grievous mistakes of the brothers of the court in said prior opinion, the proper procedure at this point would be to implead the law school itself as the party best able to pay Crozet Pizza and most responsible for bringing this Symposium into being. 

The dissent also hereby questions the judgment that “[t]he bartender should not go to law school.” Symposium on Law Student Drinking Habits (SLSDH) v. Crozet Pizza 78 U.Va. 23 (2026). Whether or not the bartender ought or ought not receive a legal education is up to the bartender, and the decision of the Court to interfere with it when it has no bearing on the case represents a level of regulatory overreach unseen since the decemviri legibus scribundis convened by C. Terentilius Arsa created the Twelve Tables. Olga Tellegen-Couperus, A Short History of Roman Law 19–20 (1990). 

To conclude, the author of the same “do[es] not deny . . . that if . . . Congress had by law vested in this Court jurisdiction over” only cases dealing with the body of leorningċildra, then the delimitation of the Court would be apropos, but the jurisdiction is not thus limited and the fact that the plaintiffs “have small acquaintance with humility” ought not be a reason to exculpate the ultimate cause of the action. Morton J. Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law 1780-1860 10 (1977) (citing Trial of William Butler for Piracy 34-35 (1813)); A.J.G. Priest, Old Hilarity 13 (1965).