$1.1M lawsuit filed in drunk driving death

A lawsuit has been launched against the impaired driver who killed an Alberta cyclist last year near Hunter River, P.E.I.

Sixty-three-year-old Elizabeth Sovis of Edmontonwas riding a bicycle near Hunter River when she was struck and killed by an impaired driver. Clarence Arnold Moase, 49 of Kensington, pleaded guilty and is serving a six-year prison sentence.

This past April,Sovis's husband, Edmund Aunger, filed a lawsuit against Moase. He is suing Moase for $1.1 million for pain, suffering and financial losses to himself and his grown children.

But Moase is fighting the civil suit, laying the blame on a restaurant that he says served him alcohol the day of the tragedy. In a statement of defence filed in P.E.I. Supreme Court, Moase names the Bluefin Restaurant in Souris as a third party in the lawsuit.

Moase alleges that staff at the restaurant served him alcohol, then failed to prevent him from drinking and driving. Lawyers for Moasecite the P.E.I. Liquor Control Act and other legislation as their grounds for claims against the restaurant.

Moase was found with a half empty bottle of vodka in his van after the crash. He had been convicted four times for drinking and driving offences before he killed Sovis.

The Bluefin Restaurant has not yet filed a statement of defence but the owner says she intends to fight Moase's allegations.