Source: http://bc-injury-law.com/blog/tag/forseeability
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 18:31:19+00:00

Document:
The Supreme Court of Canada recently addressed the legal framework for striking pleadings pursuant to Rule 9-5. In short, the Court repeated the longstanding test that pleadings will only be dismissed under the BC Supreme Court Rules if they have ‘no reasonable prospect of success‘ and that the parties cannot tender evidence in support of these applications.
In the recent case (R v. Imperial Tobacco Ltd.) the Court was faced with a lawsuit by British Columbia seeking to recover health care costs for tobacco related illnesses. In the course of defending the lawsuit the tobacco companies issued Third Party Pleadings against the Government of Canada pleading that if they are held liable to the Government of BC the Federal Government should indemnify the Tobacco Companies for damages payable. The Government of Canada brought an application to dismiss the Third Party Pleadings.
 The power to strike out claims that have no reasonable prospect of success is a valuable housekeeping measure essential to effective and fair litigation. It unclutters the proceedings, weeding out the hopeless claims and ensuring that those that have some chance of success go on to trial.
 This promotes two goods — efficiency in the conduct of the litigation and correct results. Striking out claims that have no reasonable prospect of success promotes litigation efficiency, reducing time and cost. The litigants can focus on serious claims, without devoting days and sometimes weeks of evidence and argument to claims that are in any event hopeless. The same applies to judges and juries, whose attention is focused where it should be — on claims that have a reasonable chance of success. The efficiency gained by weeding out unmeritorious claims in turn contributes to better justice. The more the evidence and arguments are trained on the real issues, the more likely it is that the trial process will successfully come to grips with the parties’ respective positions on those issues and the merits of the case.
 Valuable as it is, the motion to strike is a tool that must be used with care. The law is not static and unchanging. Actions that yesterday were deemed hopeless may tomorrow succeed. Before Donoghue v. Stevenson,  A.C. 562 (H.L.) introduced a general duty of care to one’s neighbour premised on foreseeability, few would have predicted that, absent a contractual relationship, a bottling company could be held liable for physical injury and emotional trauma resulting from a snail in a bottle of ginger beer. Before Hedley Byrne & Co. v. Heller & Partners Ltd.,  2 All E.R. 575 (H.L.), a tort action for negligent misstatement would have been regarded as incapable of success. The history of our law reveals that often new developments in the law first surface on motions to strike or similar preliminary motions, like the one at issue in Donoghue v. Stevenson. Therefore, on a motion to strike, it is not determinative that the law has not yet recognized the particular claim. The court must rather ask whether, assuming the facts pleaded are true, there is a reasonable prospect that the claim will succeed. The approach must be generous and err on the side of permitting a novel but arguable claim to proceed to trial.
It is not about evidence, but the pleadings. The facts pleaded are taken as true. Whether the evidence substantiates the pleaded facts, now or at some future date, is irrelevant to the motion to strike. The judge on the motion to strike cannot consider what evidence adduced in the future might or might not show. To require the judge to do so would be to gut the motion to strike of its logic and ultimately render it useless.
 This is not unfair to the claimant. The presumption that the facts pleaded are true operates in the claimant’s favour. The claimant chooses what facts to plead, with a view to the cause of action it is asserting. If new developments raise new possibilities — as they sometimes do — the remedy is to amend the pleadings to plead new facts at that time.
 Related to the issue of whether the motion should be refused because of the possibility of unknown evidence appearing at a future date is the issue of speculation. The judge on a motion to strike asks if the claim has any reasonable prospect of success. In the world of abstract speculation, there is a mathematical chance that any number of things might happen. That is not what the test on a motion to strike seeks to determine. Rather, it operates on the assumption that the claim will proceed through the court system in the usual way — in an adversarial system where judges are under a duty to apply the law as set out in (and as it may develop from) statutes and precedent. The question is whether, considered in the context of the law and the litigation process, the claim has no reasonable chance of succeeding.
This decision is also worth reviewing for the Court’s discussion of the concepts of proximity, forseeability, and private law duties of care which I will address in a separate post.
Important reasons for judgement were released last month by the BC Court of Appeal making it clear that insurance brokers can be sued for professional negligence if they fail to properly advise clients of the limits of their insurance policies.
In last month’s case (Beck v. Johnston, Maier Insurance Agencies Ltd.) the Plaintiff’s home was intentionally burned down by her husband in a tragic murder/suicide. The home was insured however the policy had an exclusion for losses that occurred as a result of “intentional acts by named insureds“.
 Members of the public purchase insurance to protect themselves and their property from unforeseen events. Policies of homeowner’s insurance, rented dwelling insurance and tenant’s insurance are invariably written by insurers, who describe the coverage that they are prepared to provide and the exceptions to that coverage in the policies they write. They then quote the premium that they require to provide the coverage….
 Both Mr. Sache, an insurance broker retained by the appellant and Mr. Pat Anderson, a licensed insurance broker retained by the respondent agreed that it is standard practice for brokers to explain the intentional act exclusion in a homeowner’s policy to a customer when insurance is first placed for that customer….
 While Ms. Beck may not have had any knowledge or belief that Mr. Beck intended to harm the home at the time her insurance coverage was renewed in July of 2007, such knowledge was not the issue. The issue was whether her insurance broker ought to have discussed her insurance needs with her when it was clear that she and her husband had separated….
Conformity with general practice, on the other hand, usually dispels a charge of negligence. It tends to show what others in the same “business” considered sufficient, that the defendant could not have learnt how to avoid the accident by the example of others, that most probably no other practical precautions could have been taken, and that the impact of an adverse judgment (especially in cases involving industry or a profession) will be industry-wide and thus assume the function of a “test case”. Finally, it underlines the need for caution against passing too cavalierly upon the conduct and decision of experts.
 The summary trial judge was clearly of the view that, when a renewal of insurance coverage is required, the broker similarly has a duty to provide relevant information about the types of coverage available to the client, to meet any change in needs that the client may have as a result of any changes in his or her circumstances of which the broker is or should be aware. There was ample evidence upon which the trial judge could make that finding, and no basis upon which this Court can interfere with it.
Earlier this week the BC Supreme Court, Victoria Registry, released reasons for judgement dismissing a lawsuit for compensation as a result of a traumatic brain injury sustained during a hockey game (More v. Bauer Nike Hockey Inc).
The incident occurred in 2004 when the Plaintiff was 17 years old. He was playing an organized game of hockey. He was wearing a helmet which was certified by the Canadian Standards Association (the “CSA”) and met all CSA standards. During the game the Plaintiff fell into the boards and suffered a subdural hematoma. This was apparently the only reported incident of a helmeted player sustaining a subdural hematoma while playing organized hockey in Canadian history.
The effects of the injury caused severe and profound disability in the Plaintiff. The Plaintiff sued various Defendants including the manufacturer of the helmet and the CSA. The Plaintiff alleged that the helmet was negligently manufactured and that the CSA was negligent in failing to adopt proper standards for helmet certification. The Plaintiff’s claims were ultimately dismissed with the Court finding that the helmet was not defectively manufactured and that the standards set by the CSA were appropriate.
This case has received considerable press in Canada and abroad even gaining mention in the New York Times sports blog. What interests me most about this case is not the ultimate result rather it was the Court’s discussion of the potential liability of institutions which set inadequate safety standards.
212] I am satisfied that it was reasonably foreseeable that a hockey player and wearer of a mandatory certified hockey helmet might suffer harm if the CSA set the certification standard unreasonably low in the circumstances. On the question of proximity, I extrapolate from Cooper at paras. 32–34. Is the player, who must obtain and wear a certified helmet in order to participate in organized hockey, so closely and directly affected by the CSA decision respecting the adequacy of the certification standard that the latter ought reasonably to have the player’s legitimate interest in safety in mind? In my respectful view, the answer must be yes.
 By legislative definition, any hockey helmet that is not certified is a hazardous product and cannot be sold in Canada. No matter how well designed the helmet may, in fact, be, no manufacturer can offer it for sale unless it is certified. The consumer hockey player has no choice and buys, or otherwise obtains, the helmet for the purpose of self-protection in a game that has inherent dangers. Nonetheless, there is some reliance by the consumer on the fact of certification and an expectation that the risk of at least some injuries is reasonably reduced. Otherwise, there would be no need for any helmet at all.
 With the greatest of deference to the possibility that Hughes stands for a different outcome, I am satisfied that there is sufficient proximity in the present case for a prima facie duty of care.
In short, this decision means that if an institution sets certification standards for products to be sold in British Columbia that institution may be liable if their standards are set at an unreasonably low level.
If someone is injured/killed intentionally by someone else can a third party be held civilly liable for failing to prevent the harm? While the answer to this question turns heavily on the facts the answer can be yes and earlier this month the Supreme Court of Canada released a decision discussing this complex area of personal injury law.
The survivors of the dead miners brought a lawsuit against various parties including the mine’s owners, their security firm and the territorial government claiming damages for “negligently failing to prevent the murders“.
 The Court discussed proximity in detail in Childs, at paras. 31-46. In Childs, as here, the proposed duty was to take care to prevent harm caused to the plaintiff by a third party; in other words, what was proposed there was a positive duty to act even though the defendant’s conduct had not directly caused foreseeable physical injury to the plaintiff. The Court noted that there are at least three factors which may identify the situations in which the law has recognized such duties (paras. 38-40). The first is that the defendant is materially implicated in the creation of the risk or has control of the risk to which others have been invited. The second is the concern for the autonomy of the persons affected by the positive action proposed. As the Chief Justice put it: “The law … accepts that competent people have the right to engage in risky activities … [and] permits third parties witnessing risk to decide not to become rescuers or otherwise intervene” (para. 39). The third is whether the plaintiff reasonably relied on the defendant to avoid and minimize risk and whether the defendant, in turn, would reasonably expect such reliance….
The relevant question is whether the miners reasonably relied on Pinkerton’s to take reasonable precautions to reduce the risk. The Court of Appeal found that was their reasonable expectation. This reasoning, in my view, supports rather than negates the existence of sufficient proximity. The fact that, as the Court of Appeal noted, any higher expectation on the miners’ part would have been unreasonable was not relevant to the analysis.
 Pinkerton’s must have shared the miners’ expectation. It was there to protect property and people. The whole point of its presence was to help secure the site so that the mine could continue to operate. The miners who continued to work during the strike made up a well-defined and identifiable group. Pinkerton’s surely ought to have expected that the very people it was there to protect would rely on it to exercise reasonable care in doing so.
 The concern about indeterminate liability is not valid here. This policy consideration has often held sway in negligence claims for pure economic loss. But even in that context, it has not always carried the day to exclude a duty of care. The concern is that the proposed duty of care, if accepted, would impose “liability in an indeterminate amount for an indeterminate time to an indeterminate class”, to use the often repeated words of Cardozo C.J. in Ultramares Corp. v. Touche, 174 N.E. 441 (N.Y. 1931), at p. 444. At the root of the concern is that the duty, and therefore the right to sue for its breach, is so broad that it extends indeterminately. In this sense, the policy concern about indeterminate liability is closely related to proximity; the question is whether there are sufficient special factors arising out of the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant so that indeterminate liability is not the result of imposing the proposed duty of care: see, e.g., Canadian National Railway Co. v. Norsk Pacific Steamship Co., ,  1 S.C.R. 1021, at p. 1153. What is required is a principled basis upon which to draw the line between those to whom the duty is owed and those to whom it is not: see, e.g., Bow Valley Husky (Bermuda) Ltd. v. Saint John Shipbuilding Ltd., ,  3 S.C.R. 1210, at para. 64, per McLachlin J. (as she then was).
 I do not see this as a difficulty here and, as a result, I do not think that the proposed duty of care exposes the government to indeterminate liability. What is in issue is liability for physical injury to miners caused by an explosion in a mine which, it is alleged, would have been prevented had the government taken reasonable care in discharging its statutory duties in relation to mine safety. The duty is to the finite group of miners working in the mine which the inspectors had inspected repeatedly. The potential liability is no more indeterminate than in the building inspector cases I reviewed earlier.
While this case was highly factually specific the legal principles discussed by the Supreme Court of Canada can be applied to more commonly seen fact patters. One example of intentional harm at the hands of others are the unfortunate cases involving sexual abuse. Where priests, teachers or other adults in authority sexually abuse young victims liability may extend beyond the person committing the crime. In certain circumstances religious hierarchies have been found liable for sexual abuse committed by priests and school boards have been found liable for abuse committed by teachers.
The Supreme Court of Canada’s detailed reasoning in this case is welcome for anyone advancing a personal injury lawsuit involving an intentional harm seeking to extend liability further and I suggest that any Canadian lawyers prosecuting such a claim familiarize themselves with this judgement in full.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.