THUNDER BAY — A man who suffered serious injuries in a slip-and-fall at the Mapleward Road solid waste and recycling facility has lost a bid for benefits under his auto insurance policy.
The Licence Appeal Tribunal of Ontario ruled that the spinal and head injuries he suffered were not the result of a motor vehicle accident as defined by the province's statutory accident benefits schedule.
On New Year's Eve 2020, the man drove to the landfill site to dispose of cardboard boxes and other refuse.
In the parking lot, he slipped on some cardboard that was lying in the snow near a recycling bin, fell, and was knocked unconscious.
After his claim for benefits under his auto policy was denied by his insurer, the case was referred to the tribunal, an independent, quasi-judicial body that handles all disputes over statutory accident benefits.
In a decision released last week, the tribunal noted that the disagreement stemmed from the applicant's lack of memory or objective evidence as to the cause of his fall.
At a hearing held earlier this year, he testified as to what he could remember, saying that when he arrived in the recycling area, he left his pickup truck's engine idling, exited the vehicle and proceeded around the side to open his tailgate.
After spending some time removing boxes, he stomped on them in the snow to flatten them, then disposed of them in the bins nearby.
He said that while he was walking to or from his truck, he slipped on cardboard in the snow, but wasn't sure where the cardboard had come from.
The man recalled falling backwards as his legs slid out in front of him, and thought that he might have hit his head on the truck's tailgate, or that he'd hit his head on the pavement, but couldn't say for sure because he didn't have a distinct memory of how he injured his head.
However, he testified that when he regained consciousness, he was looking up at the tail pipe from underneath his truck.
No one was around to witness the fall, and the incident happened outside the recording range of the city's surveillance cameras.
Due to the resulting spinal injury, the man remained lying on the parking lot in the snow and slush until he was discovered by a passerby and a city worker, who called for an ambulance.
The tribunal stated that in order to qualify for insurance benefits, the onus was on him to establish that his injuries were directly caused by his use of his automobile.
It noted that one of the individuals who found him on the ground had testified that he was about three feet from the recycling bins — so close that he could touch them — but far enough that he could not have touched the applicant's truck from his position at the man's side.
Although surveillance video didn't capture the fall, it did show a reflection of him walking to dispose of a box, but did not show him walking back to his truck, "which indicates either he fell at the recycling bins where his reflection on the ground was less apparent or he was too far outside the view of the security camera for his reflection to appear after this point," the tribunal said in its decision.
Several witnesses testified to seeing cardboard under the man's legs after he fell, but although he felt it might have been a box he was disposing of, he also said he was unsure.
The tribunal concluded that the cardboard did not come from the claimant's truck, saying "without further evidence it's not possible to corroborate the source of this box or to link it causally to his vehicle."
It rejected his submission that the dominant feature of his injury was the use or operation of his truck while unloading recyclables.
"The use of the automobile was at best ancillary," the tribunal said. "Falling on cardboard in a slushy parking lot outside of recycling bins is a foreseeable and common risk when walking in that area in the winter regardless if an automobile is involved. Put another way, the cardboard was the dominant feature of the fall, not the use of operation of the automobile."
The tribunal added that the slush and cardboard were intervening events that broke the chain of causation.
"The truck did not contribute to the poor conditions that led to the applicant's fall, nor was it a factor in the conditions at the time of the injury."
Accordingly, it concluded that his injuries were not the result of an "accident" as defined in the statutory accident benefits schedule.
