Asbury Park packs more bars, clubs and live music into a few blocks than almost anywhere at the Jersey Shore, and every one of those doors has someone standing at it. Most nights that’s fine. But there is a version of this story we hear over and over: a guest gets asked to leave, security decides to make a point, and the guest ends up on the sidewalk with a concussion, a broken orbital bone, a torn shoulder, or a wrist that needed surgery.
Here’s what people in that situation almost never realize — the bar can be legally responsible for what its bouncer did to you. Not just the bouncer. The business.
A bouncer is allowed to remove you. That’s it.
A New Jersey business can refuse service and can ask a patron to leave. Security staff can escort someone out. What they cannot do is administer a beating on the way. The line is reasonable force to remove — and it is crossed constantly:
- Chokeholds, headlocks, or restraint that cuts off breathing
- Strikes, takedowns, or slamming someone onto pavement or a concrete floor
- Multiple staff piling onto one person who is already restrained or complying
- Continuing after the patron is outside and no longer a threat
- Throwing someone down an exterior stairwell or into a curb
Force like that isn’t crowd control. Depending on the injuries, the same conduct can also be a criminal matter for the bouncer — simple assault falls under N.J.S.A. 2C:12-1, and serious bodily injury pushes it higher. Your civil claim for your injuries is separate from whatever the police do or don’t charge.
Why the venue is on the hook, not just the guy at the door
Two doors into the business, and both matter:
Responsibility for its employees. A bouncer working the door is doing the job he was hired to do. When an employee injures someone in the course of that work, the employer can be answerable for it. That’s true whether he’s a direct employee or staffed through a security company — both may be in the case.
Negligent security and negligent hiring. Separate from what happened in the moment, a business that puts an untrained, unlicensed, or known-violent person at its door — or that has watched incidents pile up and changed nothing — has a problem of its own. New Jersey property owners owe patrons they invite in a duty of reasonable care. Staffing your door with someone you should have known would hurt a customer is a failure of that duty.
The distinction matters for one blunt reason: a bouncer usually has no money and no insurance. The bar and the security company do.
The evidence disappears in days — move now
- Get treated the same night. Head injuries and internal damage don’t announce themselves at 1 a.m. with adrenaline running. The ER record is also the timestamp that ties your injuries to that night.
- Surveillance video is the case. Asbury Park venues are covered in cameras — inside, at the door, and along the street — but many systems overwrite in a week or two. A written preservation demand needs to go out immediately.
- Get names and numbers from witnesses before you leave. Strangers who saw it are gone forever otherwise.
- Photograph everything — your face, your hands, torn clothing — that night and again for the next several days as bruising develops.
- Report it to police, even if you’re not sure you want anyone charged. It creates an independent record.
- Say nothing to the bar’s insurer. Their first call is not about your health.
“But I’d been drinking”
People talk themselves out of good claims with this one. Being intoxicated at a bar does not authorize the staff to hurt you, and it does not end your case. New Jersey uses comparative fault — your own conduct may be weighed, but it doesn’t erase a venue’s responsibility for excessive force. We explain how that math works in our guide to comparative negligence in New Jersey. And note a very different but related route: when a bar overserves someone who then hurts another person, dram shop liability can put the business in the case for that too.
If the night also ended with you charged — which happens constantly when security tells their version first — that’s a fight worth having as well; see how bar-fight assault charges get handled at the Shore.
Talk to a Shark
Goldman Law Firm handles injury claims across Monmouth County, including Asbury Park’s bars, clubs and boardwalk venues, and we know how fast this evidence vanishes. If security put you in the hospital, call us before the video is overwritten. Start with our Asbury Park personal injury page or our full NJ personal injury guide — then reach out for a free consultation.