BANGOR – The husband of a woman who was killed in August when the pickup truck she was driving crashed into Moosehead Lake has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Greenville garage that repaired and inspected the vehicle before the fatal incident.

Kenneth L. Leavitt of Singer Island Fla., on Tuesday sued Dave’s Automotive Services Inc. in Greenville alleging that garage employees caused the death of Linda M. Brown, 56, by improperly repairing and inspecting the truck.

The garage is owned by David Hall of Greenville, but the lawsuit named only the business as a defendant.

As a result of Brown’s death on Aug. 17, the Maine State Police in September suspended the garage’s and Hall’s licenses to perform inspections for six months.

Efforts to reach Hall on Thursday were unsuccessful.

Leavitt is seeking an unspecified amount of damages in the wrongful death lawsuit, including funeral expenses and the loss of the comfort, society and companionship of his wife. For a lawsuit to be filed in federal court, alleged damages sought must total more than $75,000.

The couple lived in Florida much of the year, but have a summer home in Greenville, a town of 2,000 inhabitants.

Brown, who borrowed the 1989 GMC Sierra pickup truck from a friend the day she died, drowned in about 15 feet of water after the truck traveled down the Pleasant Street hill from a residential area. It crashed through a barricade and drove off the end of a pier near the heart of the business district, witnesses reported.

Bystanders attempted to rescue Brown, who was trapped in the submerged truck, but their efforts were in vain.

Witnesses told police that Brown had been honking the vehicle’s horn as she careened down the steep hill and they reported hearing dragging noises. The dragging noise apparently was made by Brown’s attempt to put the vehicle in reverse or park to stop it.

An inspection of the pickup truck by the Maine State Police Vehicle Inspection Unit revealed several defects. The most egregious were failures in the right front brake line and the left rear brake lines, as well as the emergency brake, Sgt. Brian Scott of the unit said in September when the suspension of Hall’s license was announced.

“Our investigation showed the vehicle had been driven 28 miles since the time of the inspection, and the investigation leads us to believe that these defects should have been observed during the inspection,” Scott said.

The vehicle was inspected on May 18.

Scott said in September that his office had no documented history on Hall or his business before the crash. No other inspection-related incidents have been recorded in connection with the business, which Hall has operated since 1997.