New Summary Judgment Rule Results in Dismissal of Claim

Langille v. Toronto (City), 2010 ONSC 443 (CanLII), is a new Rule 20 motion in which the Court weighed evidence, evaluated credibility and drew reasonable inferences. The Court concluded that the City had suffered prejudice and that the plaintiff was without reasonable excuse. The Court then dismissed the plaintiff’s claim.

This may prove to be a precedent helpful to municipalities.

Section 44 (10) of the Municipal Act, 2001 requires, in regard to claims for highway and sidewalk maintenance, that claimants must provide written notice of their claim to the municipality “within 10 days after the occurrence of the injury”.

Subsection (12) goes on to state that “Failure to give notice or insufficiency of the notice is not a bar to the action if a judge finds that there is reasonable excuse for the want or the insufficiency of the notice and that the municipality is not prejudiced in its defence.”

These statutory notices are often sent to municipalities late.

The issues of “reasonable excuse” and “prejudice” in subsection 12 require evidence that must be weighed and is tied up with the credibility of witnesses.

Municipalities have often been unable to bring summary judgment motions for the failure to give notice because of the inability of a court to weigh evidence, evaluate credibility and draw reasonable inferences from the evidence on Rule 20 motions.

Now under new Rule 20 this is possible.

The plaintiff slipped and fell on ice on a sidewalk in the City of Toronto on March 1, 2004. He met with a paralegal on March 8, 2004, and the paralegal drafted a notice letter. The City maintained they never received it. The paralegal could only say that it was office protocol that the letter would have been faxed or sent by regular mail but had no evidence of doing so.

The motion judge was satisfied that the letter had not been sent and that the required notice was not provided.

The motion judge then went on to consider whether the Municipality had suffered prejudice and concluded that where notice has not been provided within ten days, the Municipality is presumed to have been prejudiced.

The City was given initial notice of the incident 12 weeks after it occurred but was not given the precise location where the plaintiff fell until nearly two years after the incident. The motion judge concluded, based on affidavit evidence from the City that they would have investigated immediately had they had the opportunity and that the City had suffered prejudice through lost opportunity to fully investigate the claim.

The motion judge also went on and concluded that the plaintiff had no reasonable excuse for failure to comply with the notice provision and, if the plaintiff has remedies, they lie “elsewhere”.

An interesting decision.