Bar owners: Take note of Ontario drunk driving case

PORT CARLING, ON—In a case that will strike a chord with bar owners across the country, the corporate owner, staff and directors of the Lake Joseph Club here face charges under Ontario’s Liquor Licence Act, and the possible suspension or loss of the liquor licence for the golf club’s Water’s Edge restaurant. The charges stem from an incident last summer in which three young men died in a car accident after drinking at the club.

The accident occurred on July 3 last year. Twenty-year-old Tyler Mulcahy was drinking at the Water’s Edge with his 19-year-old girlfriend and two friends, Cory Mintz, 20, and Kourosh Totonchian, 19. They were reported to have ordered 31 drinks in about three hours. They left the golf club in Mulcahy’s car, and with him at the wheel it went off the road and landed in the Joseph River. The young woman escaped alive but the three men died.

Ontario Provincial Police laid a total of 34 charges against golf club owner ClubLink Corp. and 16 individuals, last month. The company, three employees and 13 directors of the golf club are charged with serving apparently intoxicated patrons and permitting drunkenness on a licensed premise.

The maximum fines for the charges are $250,000 for each of the counts for the company if convicted, and $100,000  for each of the individuals who could also face up to 12 months in jail.

On top of that, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario could suspend or revoke the club’s liquor licence.

AGCO spokesperson Lisa Murray told CLN that each case is looked at individually by the provincial liquor regulator which takes into account a number of factors, including the history of the licensee with regard to infractions of its liquor licence. Murray said that since ClubLink took over the golf club in 1995 there had never been a single problem of compliance with its licence conditions.

She said that in Ontario at least once a year the AGCO imposes a lengthy suspension or revocation of a liquor licence because an establishment overserves a customer who subsequently gets into an accident while driving, with death or injury resulting.
It is up to police to lay charges under the Liquor Licence Act, or even under the Criminal Code, that could result in a fine or jail term if someone is convicted.

One notable thing in this case is that along with three employees who were working at the bar where the four young people where drinking before getting into the car accident, police also charged 13 directors of the company who were not even present that day.

Roger Oatley, a personal injury lawyer based in Barrie, commented to The Toronto Star that it is not unusual to go after a pub or tavern owner after such an incident. He noted that in this case the restaurant is controlled by a large company. “The only way to get at an owner is to charge people on the board of directors,” he told The Star.

One problem in this case is that two of the people charged were actually former directors who have not been with the company since December 2007.

This led Peter Tabuns, NDP MPP for Toronto-Danforth to comment that charging people without investigating to make sure they were part of the problem sounded “shoddy” to him.

The accused were scheduled to appear in court in Bracebridge last month as CLN went to press.