Convicted impaired driver Marco Muzzo, who was sentenced to 10 years behind bars after pleading guilty in 2016 to four counts of impaired driving causing death and two of impaired driving causing bodily harm, must answer questions in a lawsuit filed against him by the mother of his victims.
Jennifer Neville-Lake lost her three children — Daniel, nine; Harrison, five; and two-year-old Milly — in the crash, along with her father Gary Neville, 65.
The children’s grandmother and great-grandmother were also badly injured.
Neville-Lake‘s husband, Edward Lake, died by suicide in June, nearly seven years after the crash.
Muzzo was driving home from Toronto Pearson International Airport when the crash occurred in September 2015. He had just arrived back from Miami, where he was celebrating his bachelor party.
A toxicologist found that Muzzo was about three times over the legal limit of alcohol consumption while behind the wheel.
The lawsuit against Muzzo names other defendants, including his family’s drywall company, Ayrfield Holdings Limited operating as Marel Contractors, plus the company that owned the private jet, the pilots and the flight attendant of the Sept. 27, 2015 flight.
Neville-Lake is seeking general and special damages and punitive, exemplary and aggravated damages.
Legal action was commenced in 2017 with discoveries held in 2019, but counsel for Muzzo is seeking to have the punitive damages claims dismissed on the basis that he has already been punished for his wrongdoing.
This week, Justice William Lemay ruled Muzzo must provide answers within 14 days to various questions to which he had previously refused to respond.
Those questions include whether Muzzo was drunk the entire weekend, whether the drinking started as soon as he boarded the plane for his trip and whether he was “using energy drinks like Red Bull or any kind of stimulants while he was in Miami.”
These answers would provide details about Muzzo’s bachelor festivities ahead of the crash in Vaughan, including his social media posts during that time.
Lawyers for Neville-Lake were seeking disclosure over the entirety of the trip while counsel for Muzzo sought to limit disclosure to the 24 hours before the accident took place.
“The events of the entire weekend are relevant and the Defendant’s desire to limit disclosure to twenty-four hours is not supportable,” ruled Lemay.
Muzzo must also provide the plaintiff with his private email account and information about past driving infractions.
The now-36-year-old was first granted day parole in April 2020. He was then granted six more months of day parole and in February 2021, Muzzo was granted full parole.
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