Someone above said something to the effect of "Yes, the vendor was negligent."

Not necessarily. Nothing I've read or heard says that the server even saw the kid. It's far from uncommon for an adult, at a concession in the crowded, hurried atmosphere of a public event, to put in one order for his entire party, and I don't know that that wasn't the case here. If so, an adult orders lemonade, the server sells him the lemonade they carry, takes the money, etc. Big deal. And we don't know what if any other beverage(s) were in the order.

Even if the kid was in view beside papa, if papa only ordered one beverage, the server couldn't know who was going to consume it. The server isn't required to be a mind reader.

Moreover, as I heard this story on NPR, just about every "authority figure" along the way said something to the effect of "I don't really want to do this, but it's the procedure."

"The procedure" in this and many like cases is a convenient excuse for stupid or negligent people to avoid involving themselves and actually using some judgment. Just about anywhere along the line, from security guard to judge to CPS, someone with half a brain and some dollop of conscience could have stopped this thing.

Dave Oesterreich