A Massachusetts man severely injured in a 2019 fatal motorcycle crash in New Hampshire that killed seven members of his motorcycle club has filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles for allegedly failing to suspend the driver’s license of the man charged in connection with the crash.
Joshua Morin, of Dalton, alleges in his lawsuit filed last week in Berkshire Superior Court that the agency acted willfully, wantonly or recklessly when it failed to process thousands of license suspensions and revocations reported from out-of-state, The Berkshire Eagle reported.
The revelation that the Registry of Motor Vehicles hadn’t been acting on scores of out-of-state notifications about driving violations was described in a report from the National Transportation Safety Board and a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the Boston Globe.
That failure allowed Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, whose license had been suspended in Connecticut after an operating under the influence charge, to continue driving, according to the lawsuit.
The victims were members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, made up of Marine veterans and their spouses.
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Connecticut sent notice of Zhukovskyy’s license suspension to Massachusetts, but the notice was not processed because of “a defect” in the registry’s computer system, the suit said.
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which oversees the registry, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Morin is seeking unspecified monetary compensation for injuries, medical expenses, lost wages, and suffering, according to the suit.
The Marine Corps veteran said he is still recovering from the June 21, 2019, crash in Randolph, New Hampshire, and will soon have his 25th surgery.