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Ottawans still have to pay $2 million over a deadly crash involving an OC Transpo bus and a drunken SUV driver nine years ago, an appeals court ruled this week — plus $25,000 in costs for the failed appeal.
A three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected all the city’s complaints about a decision earlier this year that found the city and bus driver Raymond Richer 20-per-cent responsible for a collision in January 2008 that killed three people and injured two more.
It was 2 a.m., Richer was driving an out-of-service bus north on slushy Riverside Drive, and was speeding a little (doing about 66 km/h in a 60 zone) when he reached the intersection with Heron Road. He was glancing left and right and checking his mirrors rather than paying close attention to the road, the first judge found, which meant he didn’t have much time to react when that SUV carrying five young people sailed through a red light in front of him.
The students — driver Mark MacDonald, Brianne Deschamps, Vanessa Crawford, Ben Gardner and Monica Neacsu, all of them 19 or 20 years old — had been bar-hopping and toxicology reports found that MacDonald had been drinking. A lot: his blood-alcohol level was three times what’s allowed for a fully licensed driver and MacDonald just had a G2 permit, which meant he wasn’t legally allowed to drive after drinking at all.
Witnesses reported seeing an SUV like MacDonald’s travelling erratically on Bank Street, running red lights and weaving.
When Richer’s bus slammed into MacDonald’s SUV, MacDonald, Deschamps and Crawford were killed. Gardiner and Neacsu were hurt, Gardiner very badly. Gardiner and his family sued the city, four pubs and MacDonald’s estate; Deschamps’ family also sued.
Judge Giovanna Toscano Roccamo found MacDonald, the red-light-running drunk driver, 80-per-cent responsible for the crash. But he was basically a kid, he left no money, and the fact he was driving drunk — the very thing that got him and his friends killed — invalidated his insurance.
In a case like this, Ontario law applies a concept called “joint and several liability.” Essentially, the victim’s allowed to collect damages from whoever can afford to pay them, on the theory that it’s not the victim’s problem exactly how the negligence is divided up. The people who screwed up can fight it out amongst themselves but the wronged party deserves to be compensated.
In this case, if MacDonald’s estate could pay 80 per cent, great. But since there’s no money there, the bill goes to the City of Ottawa.
Municipalities in Ontario have screamed about this to the provincial government for years, especially sparsely populated townships and counties with big road networks. They’re constantly getting pulled into court for civil cases over vehicle crashes because they have deep pockets: litigants know that if they can get a judge to agree that a local government is just one-per-cent responsible for a crash, because of the design of a road or poor maintenance or its not having been perfectly plowed on a snowy night, they’ll get their damages covered.
The province pledged a review of the law in 2014, then concluded it was fine as it is.
Faced with $2 million in damages and costs for a complicated multiparty legal case, the city appealed. Toscano Roccamo wrongly held Richer to a high standard, that of a “professional driver” and not an ordinary person, even though his bus wasn’t in service, the city argued. Its lawyers challenged Toscano Roccamo’s uncertainty over just how fast Richer was driving — though nobody including him disputed that he was speeding. And they wanted to overturn her decision about making the city pay Gardiner’s and the Deschamps family’s legal costs.
The appeals court was having none of it. Richer was a professional driver, Toscano Roccamo didn’t need to know precisely how fast his bus was going when it hit MacDonald’s SUV, and there’s no evidence she was wrong in her ruling about the legal costs, the panel said. Take your appeal and go away.
The city government should pay the money and cut its losses, its chief lawyer Rick O’Connor advised city council in a Thursday-morning memo. All that would be left is an appeal to the Supreme Court and it’s not likely to be interested in the case, he wrote: “A further appeal to Canada’s highest court would, therefore, appear to offer little likelihood of success. Legal Services would not recommend pursuing any further appeal of the decision.”
查看原文...
A three-judge panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected all the city’s complaints about a decision earlier this year that found the city and bus driver Raymond Richer 20-per-cent responsible for a collision in January 2008 that killed three people and injured two more.
It was 2 a.m., Richer was driving an out-of-service bus north on slushy Riverside Drive, and was speeding a little (doing about 66 km/h in a 60 zone) when he reached the intersection with Heron Road. He was glancing left and right and checking his mirrors rather than paying close attention to the road, the first judge found, which meant he didn’t have much time to react when that SUV carrying five young people sailed through a red light in front of him.
The students — driver Mark MacDonald, Brianne Deschamps, Vanessa Crawford, Ben Gardner and Monica Neacsu, all of them 19 or 20 years old — had been bar-hopping and toxicology reports found that MacDonald had been drinking. A lot: his blood-alcohol level was three times what’s allowed for a fully licensed driver and MacDonald just had a G2 permit, which meant he wasn’t legally allowed to drive after drinking at all.
Witnesses reported seeing an SUV like MacDonald’s travelling erratically on Bank Street, running red lights and weaving.
When Richer’s bus slammed into MacDonald’s SUV, MacDonald, Deschamps and Crawford were killed. Gardiner and Neacsu were hurt, Gardiner very badly. Gardiner and his family sued the city, four pubs and MacDonald’s estate; Deschamps’ family also sued.
Judge Giovanna Toscano Roccamo found MacDonald, the red-light-running drunk driver, 80-per-cent responsible for the crash. But he was basically a kid, he left no money, and the fact he was driving drunk — the very thing that got him and his friends killed — invalidated his insurance.
In a case like this, Ontario law applies a concept called “joint and several liability.” Essentially, the victim’s allowed to collect damages from whoever can afford to pay them, on the theory that it’s not the victim’s problem exactly how the negligence is divided up. The people who screwed up can fight it out amongst themselves but the wronged party deserves to be compensated.
In this case, if MacDonald’s estate could pay 80 per cent, great. But since there’s no money there, the bill goes to the City of Ottawa.
Municipalities in Ontario have screamed about this to the provincial government for years, especially sparsely populated townships and counties with big road networks. They’re constantly getting pulled into court for civil cases over vehicle crashes because they have deep pockets: litigants know that if they can get a judge to agree that a local government is just one-per-cent responsible for a crash, because of the design of a road or poor maintenance or its not having been perfectly plowed on a snowy night, they’ll get their damages covered.
The province pledged a review of the law in 2014, then concluded it was fine as it is.
Faced with $2 million in damages and costs for a complicated multiparty legal case, the city appealed. Toscano Roccamo wrongly held Richer to a high standard, that of a “professional driver” and not an ordinary person, even though his bus wasn’t in service, the city argued. Its lawyers challenged Toscano Roccamo’s uncertainty over just how fast Richer was driving — though nobody including him disputed that he was speeding. And they wanted to overturn her decision about making the city pay Gardiner’s and the Deschamps family’s legal costs.
The appeals court was having none of it. Richer was a professional driver, Toscano Roccamo didn’t need to know precisely how fast his bus was going when it hit MacDonald’s SUV, and there’s no evidence she was wrong in her ruling about the legal costs, the panel said. Take your appeal and go away.
The city government should pay the money and cut its losses, its chief lawyer Rick O’Connor advised city council in a Thursday-morning memo. All that would be left is an appeal to the Supreme Court and it’s not likely to be interested in the case, he wrote: “A further appeal to Canada’s highest court would, therefore, appear to offer little likelihood of success. Legal Services would not recommend pursuing any further appeal of the decision.”
查看原文...
