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What should you do when you fall in a store in Canada?

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Published by:

Sarah Chen

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Reviewed by:

Alistair Vigier

Last Modified: 2022-04-11

Have you been injured after slipping and falling in a store or in a public place? Are you wondering what you should do when you fall in a store? Depending on the severity of your injuries, the occupier of the premises where the fall occurred could be on the hook legally for damages related to the accident. 

 

Slip and fall lawsuits get a lot of flak, with plaintiffs often mocked and ridiculed and their claims characterized in the media as frivolous wastes of court time. Personal injury lawyers who deal with slip and fall lawsuits, meanwhile, are often maligned as ambulance chasers with low-budget, late-night television commercials looking to cash in on peoples’ misfortunes. But slipping and falling in a store or in someone’s house through no fault of your own due to dangerous conditions can have devastating, life-long consequences. 

 

Whether someone slips on a banana peel in a grocery store or on snow and ice in a parking lot, the injuries from such falls can range from simple cuts and bruises to broken bones and fractures, and even traumatic brain injuries that leave people changed forever.  Every year, thousands of Canadians get injured slipping and falling whether it’s on ice and snow outside, or on spilled liquid inside grocery stores and elsewhere. 

 

If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall in a store or elsewhere, ClearWay can connect you with a personal injury lawyer to talk about your case. If you’ve incurred medical expenses and had to take time off work due to your injuries, getting a lawyer is an important step in getting the compensation you’re entitled to after your fall.  

 

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Slip and Falls Injure Thousands of Canadians Annually

 

The City of Toronto, for example, has a policy on preventing slipping, tripping, and falling due to the high number of people injured each year, whether they are city employees or members of the public. 

 

“Canada-wide, approximately 60,000 workers get injured annually due to falls, with approximately 17,000 occurring in Ontario,” the city’s policy states. “More than 20 [percent] of all lost-time injuries to City employees each year result from slips, trips and falls. Slips, trips and falls can also cause harm to members of the public.” 

 

According to the City of Toronto’s policy, slips, trips, and falls are often caused by wet or oily surfaces and spills or even loose floor mats and rugs.  People injured in trip and fall accidents commonly claim that they could not see the obstacle that tripped them up due to poor lighting or other obstructions. For municipal governments, this means that city sidewalk that is simply uneven or slightly raised pose a risk to pedestrians if the uneven surface is hard to see, especially in the dark.  

 

Toronto’s policy compels city workers to “take actions to eliminate slip, trip and fall hazards” and be “vigilant and ensure that any slip, trip and fall hazards they are aware of are reported to their supervisors.” As well, city workers who design municipal facilities must ensure those premises have the “appropriate flooring.”

 

In addition, design employees must ensure “that other aspects of the facilities are designed to minimize or eliminate the risk of slips, trips and falls.” This could include making sure that canopies over doorways don’t cause water to pool during rainfall while making sure that there’s adequate lighting “to enable detection of hazards without creating glare on walking surfaces.” 

 

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Fall In a Store Claims and Limitation Periods

 

But last year, Ontario amended its Occupier’s Liability Act to drastically reduce the amount of time someone injured in a slip and fall can file a claim. While most personal injuries that result in court action carry a two-year statute of limitations, the amendment to Ontario’s liability law gives people a 60-day window to notify a private property owner of the claim and only 10 days for those injured on municipal property. 

 

Personal injury lawyer Rajiv Haté, with Kotak Personal Injury Law, told CTV News at the time of the change that 60 days is hardly enough time for injured parties to deal with a claim. 

 

“This could lead to the barring of a number of legitimate claims,” Haté told CTV News in January 2021. The lawyer also said that “being able to identify the appropriate parties that need to be put on notice within 60 days is not always possible.”

 

While provincial occupier’s liability legislation varies across the country, the prospect of possible injuries due to hazardous conditions means that businesses, property owners, tenants, along with municipal governments must be proactive to prevent dangerous conditions from taking root. Insurance premiums, for instance, can jump tens of thousands of dollars a year due to personal injury claims like slip and falls. 

 

Legal Precedents and Past Cases Involving the Occupier’s Liability Act

 

In a paper entitled “Not Your Grandmother’s Slip and Fall” presented at the Annual Civil Litigation Conference in 2015, Fiona Porter and Ariane Wiseman with Intact Insurance laid out the details of several important slip and fall cases that have been decided by Canadian courts. The paper includes a detailed discussion of the duty of care placed on property owners and occupiers. 

 

The Occupier’s Liability Act states: “An occupier of premises owes a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that persons entering on the premises, and the property brought on the premises by those persons are reasonably safe while on the premises.” 

 

Discussion About a Fall In a Store

 

Porter and Wiseman begin their paper with a discussion of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in a case called Waldick v. Malcolm, where a man named Norman Waldick had visited a farmhouse for a haircut. He slipped and fell and fractured his skull, and the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal by the Malcolms, the tenants of the farmhouse, finding they breached the Occupier’s Liability Act by not salting or sanding their driveway or parking area. The Malcolms claimed it wasn’t a “local custom” to do so, but the Supreme Court panel was unmoved by that claim. 

 

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What should you do when you fall in a store?

 

The court found that the “local custom” of not salting or sanding was not proven despite one of the occupier’s testimonies, which the court found “unsupported.” The Supreme Court panel also found that the Occupier’s Liability Act was conceived to “discourage this type of generalized negligence.” 

 

Determination of negligence

 

“Even if there had been adequate evidence in the record of such a local custom, that customers would not necessarily be decisive against a determination of negligence.  No amount of general community compliance will render negligent conduct reasonable in all the circumstances. 

 

If it is unreasonable to do absolutely nothing to one’s driveway in the face of clearly treacherous conditions, it matters little that one’s neighbours also act unreasonably,” the SCC panel found. “It was far from self-evident that the ‘practice’ of not sanding or salting parking areas and driveways in the area should earn the acceptance of the courts.”

 

With this finding in mind, Porter and Wiseman point out that analyzing the “duty of care” in slip and fall cases “requires consideration of ‘such care as in all circumstances of the case is reasonable”. In other words, each case will turn on its facts.” While many slip and fall cases have similar issues, the facts of each case and circumstances of a fall can differ widely and courts are obliged to consider them to determine who is at fault.

 

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Responsive safety actions by occupiers

 

 In a case before the Ontario Court of Appeal involving a slip and fall on a grape in a grocery store, for example, the appellate panel ruled “that existing case law concerning preventative measures is ultimately not controlling of whether a particular occupier met the standard of care.”

 

Porter and Wiseman write that the appellant, a woman who suffered a broken ankle requiring surgery, unsuccessfully argued that “trial judges are obliged in [Occupier’s Liability Act] cases tried by judge and jury to articulate the governing standard of care according to prior judicial decisions about conduct found to have satisfied, or to have fallen short of, the applicable standard of care.”

 

Slips, Trips, and Falls in the Workplace

 

In British Columbia, thousands of workers get injured in falls every year, costing millions in lost productivity and worker’s compensation payouts. According to WorkSafeBC’s guide to preventing slips and falls in the workplace, such injuries make up 20 percent of all workers’ injury claims each year.  

 

“For business, injuries from slips, trips and falls can be financially devastating,” WorkSafe’s guide states. “Each year, these injuries cost B.C. businesses more than 260,000 lost workdays and more than $206 million in workers’ compensation payments … Across all industries, slips, trips, and falls are the costliest workplace incidents and some of the biggest causes of general productivity loss.” 

 

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Fall In a Store Lawsuits in Canada

 

If you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident in a store in Canada, retaining a lawyer is a good bet if you want to recover damages and get compensation for any pain and suffering and lost income. ClearWay can put you in touch with an experienced personal injury lawyer who can lay out your options after you’ve been injured in a slip and fall accident. While it may escalate by going to court, many slip and fall cases involving stores end up settling out of court without the need for a trial by judge and jury. 

 

However, slip and fall lawsuits are not uncommon and dozens if not hundreds of claims get filed in courts across the country every single day. While the Supreme Court of Canada and provincial appellate courts have decided an untold number of these cases over the years, the facts and circumstances of each one can vary widely. 

 

It shouldn’t be assumed that a store in which you’ve fallen will write you a big cheque after you’ve been hurt. That’s why, if you’ve been injured in a fall in a store, you should contact ClearWay to connect you with the right lawyer for your case. Depending on where you live and how badly injured you may be, slip and fall personal injury lawsuits are subject to limitation periods that mean you only have so much time to pursue your claim.

 

 Contacting a lawyer as soon as possible is a great way to ensure your potential lawsuit gets on track before the chance to get paid for your injuries slips away! 

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