Restaurant sale may void penalty in fatal accident

WAKEFIELD, N.H. – Last month, a restaurant pleaded guilty to serving too much alcohol to the driver in a crash that killed six people in 2001.

The Pine River Steak House Corp. was fined $24,000, ordered to complete 100 hours of community service and put on probation. Owner Edward Donnelly paid the fine, but he’s put the restaurant up for sale and hasn’t started performing his community service.

Now prosecutors and the state Liquor Commission say they don’t know if they can impose the rest of the sentence once the business is dissolved. That’s because the business – not Donnelly – was held responsible.

“We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker, who prosecuted the case.

Making defendants comply with sentences is harder when they are corporations rather than individuals because the former cannot be sent to jail, Delker said.

“You lose that leverage in a corporate criminal case,” he said.

Casey Davis and Aaron Parent were drinking at the restaurant before Davis crashed his Lincoln Continental, which was speeding at up to 100 mph, into a minivan on Route 16 carrying the White family of Bartlett. Davis, Parent, and four members of the White family were killed. They were Sonia White, 24, who was pregnant; her stepson Ian White, 16; and two of her nieces visiting from the Philippines, Asia Russell, 8, and Princess Mercedes Russell, 11.

The corporation admitted in Carroll County Superior Court that restaurant employees served too much alcohol to David, 24, and Parent, 26, on the night of Sept. 29, 2001.

When the restaurant is sold, the community service and probation provisions of the sentence would not apply to the new owners. They also could apply for a liquor license free of sanctions that would apply to the Pine River Steak House Corp.

New Hampshire and Maine liquor officials told Foster’s Daily Democrat the company’s recent guilty pleas would not prevent Donnelly from applying for a liquor license if he opened a new restaurant.

“There’s nothing that says they cannot apply,” said Randy Avery, deputy chief of liquor law enforcement in New Hampshire.

Avery said Donnelly, as the owner of Pine River, must perform the company’s community service, which includes 50 hours of lectures to educate other drinking establishments about the dangers of serving intoxicated patrons.

Avery said he will do whatever he can to make sure the corporation and Donnelly are held accountable.

“I would put every waking hour into making sure the penalty is paid,” he said.

Wakefield is near the Maine border. Jeffrey Austin, supervisor of the Maine State Police unit that oversees liquor licensing in Augusta, said there have been cases where people stripped of liquor licenses in other states have become “silent partners” in new restaurant-bar businesses in Maine.

He said such arrangements are difficult to detect if the silent partner is not named on the application for a liquor license.

Aiden Moore, the lead investigator on the Pine River case before leaving the New Hampshire Liquor Commission last year, agreed that tracking the movements of restaurant and bar owners who start new businesses in other states is a challenge.

Unlike criminal felony convictions, which state law enforcement agencies can share, there is no national database that tracks liquor law violations, he said.