One woman in Canada is attempting to slam a food and beverage company with a lawsuit in the wake of her becoming so drunk that she ended up inflicting well over $10 million in harm to a row of houses.
26-year-old Daniella Leis was driving her way home after a night spent drinking at a Marilyn Manson Concert hosted in London, Ontario, back in August of 2019. Reportedly, she was driving down the wrong side of the road. She then veered off the road and crashed the car she was operating into a house, which resulted in a broken gas line and subsequently sparked an explosion that destroyed the homes of four families and injured a total of seven people. The people injured included a number of first responders. A pair of police officers were injured, as well as a pair of firefighters. One of those firefights required a stint in the hospital of over a week before being marked as stable enough to go home.
Additionally, the entire neighborhood was forced to evacuate and both the water and gas utilities were shut down for the entire area. The total harm done to the homes was calculated to sit at a cost between $9.8 million and $14.7 million.
“The financial impact of Ms. Leis’ actions have been enormous, with a total damage estimate approaching $15 million,” explained Judge George Orsini to the court.
In the wake of the incident, in 2020, Leis chose to plea guilty to four counts of impaired driving and was given a sentence in jail of three years in 2021. Despite this, she and her father, Shawn Leis, elected to slam a lawsuit this month which targeted the business which gave her the alcoholic beverages.
The pair is attempting to sue Ovations Ontario Food Services, using the grounds that the business should be held liable for her actions and the subsequent explosion because the workers removed Leis from the premises while not taking strong enough measures to make sure that she would not try and drive a vehicle to get home.
The statement of claim reportedly established that the business did not try to look into her “intended mode of transportation as she existed [sic] Budweiser Gardens when they knew or ought to have known that she was or appealed [sic] to be intoxicated and/or impaired.” It also claimed that the group did not staff the necessary number of bouncers, nor keep proper track of how drunk people were getting before they left.
Finally, it noted that if Leis and her family are made to pay out any funds, they are “entitled to contribution and indemnity from the defendant (Ovation).”
