Municipality held 100% liable for Car Accident on Public Road - Belanger v. Sudbury (Regional Municipality), 2017 ONCA 428 (CanLII)

August 09, 2017, Kitchener, Ontario

Posted by: Robert Deutschmann, Personal Injury Lawyer

Belanger v. Sudbury (Regional Municipalit

Liability: Did municipality have a duty of care to maintain roadway; was municipality negligent; was municipality required to maintain the roadway if it did not know about the state of disrepair; municipality found 100% liable and negligent and but for the condition of the road the accident would not have occurred

In a recent Ontario Court of Appeal Decision, the Municipality of Sudbury appealed a lower court decision which held them liable for an accident.

On November 22, 2000 Ms. Belanger was in a serious car accident during a winter storm. She sustained catastrophic injuries and sued the municipality for negligence claiming the municipality failed to meet their obligations under the Municipal Act R.S.O. 1990 to keep the road in a reasonable state of repair. The trial judge ruled in favour of Ms. Belanger awarding $12 million. He found that the road was in a state of disrepair and but for the conditions the accident would never have occurred. The municipality appealed the ruling relying on the statutory defences to negligence which provide that a municipality was not liable for failing to keep a highway or bridge in a reasonable state of repair: i) “if it did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know about the state of repair of the highway or bridge” (s. 284(1.2)); or ii) “if it took reasonable steps to prevent the default from arising” (s. 284(1.3)).

The case was dismissed on appeal as the unanimous court found the trial judge made no palpable and overriding error in his findings of fact. The trial judge held that the municipality’s employees reasonable should have been expected to know of the conditions of the road, and that the conditions of ice were due to the municipality’s failure to employ plowing, slating and preventative maintenance work outlined in expert evidence and reflected in the municipality’s own standards and procedures.

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