Why a court upheld a $175K personal injury award against Ontario Place

Ontario’s Court of Appeal has upheld a $175,000 damage award against Ontario Place in Toronto, finding that Ontario Place had blocked people’s access to the main exit and failed to erect barriers that would have prevented people from leaving the premises on a wet, grassy hill.

This led to a chain of events in which one young concertgoer, who had consumed alcohol, jumped from the grassy hill in his flip flops and landed awkwardly on the roadway below, tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee, requiring surgery.

A trial judge found the concertgoer was 25% negligent for his injuries while Ontario Place was 75% negligent. The lower court awarded a total of more than $175,000 to the injured concertgoer, which Ontario Place appealed on multiple grounds.

Among other things, Ontario Place contended the injured young man was “the author of his own misfortune,” because he jumped onto the roadway from a pathway on the hill instead of skidding down the wet grass, as he had claimed.

But the Ontario Court for Appeal said Ontario Place’s position failed to recognize a wider chain of causation that led to the young man’s fall.

“….The trial judge specifically found that ‘[b]y blocking the pedestrian bridge and making no reasonable effort from preventing the crowd, a number who have been drinking alcohol, from going onto that wet hazardous hill, Ontario Place failed in its duty to take care that persons were reasonably safe while on its premises,” the Court of Appeal ruled in its decision released Jan. 12.

“It is important to note that the trial judge did not find that Ontario Place had an obligation to prevent patrons from entering onto all patches of wet grass, everywhere on the premises, but pinpointed what he viewed as Ontario Place’s negligent decision to not place ‘barriers to prevent people from going down [the] slippery hill.’ He concluded that it would have been a ‘simple matter to warn people to avoid that hill as it was a slip-and-fall hazard after a heavy rain.’

“The trial judge did what s. 3 [of Ontario’s Occupiers’ Liability Act] directs him to do – he carefully considered what would have been reasonable in the circumstances. In the end he found two clear breaches: 1) the failure to erect barriers at the location where people would proceed down the hill in question, and 2) the failure to warn the crowd (i.e., by a sign) to avoid the hill.”

On July 14, 2016, Patrick Lyng, age 21 at the time, attended a concert at Ontario Place in Toronto with his friend, court documents show. It rained heavily that day.

Following the concert, Lyng, his friend, and other concertgoers exited the main gates and went to a pedestrian bridge leading over Lake Shore Blvd. to the Exhibition GO train station.

“This bridge was the fastest and most direct route to that location,” the court observed. “Upon arrival at the bridge, [Lyng] found that it was closed. Two security guards were blocking entry. Along with others, [Lyng] and his friend proceeded down a hill next to the bridge.”

There were no barricades or warnings limiting access to the hill, the court noted. Lyng’s friend testified he went down the hill first and found it was wet and slippery. He said he “skidded down” without falling. But Lyng, following his friend, fell and sustained a serious knee injury requiring surgery.

Ontario Place argued Lyng injured himself when he jumped from a pathway on the hill onto the roadway below, and that the wet grass wasn’t even a factor in his fall, as he had claimed. But the appeal court rejected this argument.

“While not putting it in quite this way, Ontario Place is essentially saying that because the trial judge found [Lyng 25%] contributorily negligent, he had to then dismiss the action in its entirety,” the Appeal Court ruled. “This is of course not the case.

“The trial judge found that Ontario Place was negligent by blocking the bridge and making no effort to prevent the crowd from proceeding down a nearby wet hazardous hill and found that [Lyng] was negligent by jumping when he got near the bottom of that hill. There is nothing inconsistent about these two findings.”

Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/sturti