Family of man who died of heart attack after 911 calls failed sues Telus

The family of a man who died of a heart attack while his loved ones were unable to contact emergency responders due to a 911 service outage have filed a lawsuit against Telus.

Dean Switzer, 55, died on March 23 last year, two days before his 56th birthday, while family and friends near Fisher Branch placed 22 calls to 911 — only to receive a message that said “hang up and call back later.” They frantically performed CPR on him for 90 minutes.

Late last week, his brother, Greg Switzer, filed a lawsuit in the Court of King’s Bench on behalf of the family, naming Telus Communications Inc. as defendant.

All of the people who attempted to call 911 were Telus customers.

Emergency crews were finally alerted after a neighbour reached out to a friend, an off-duty RCMP officer in the area.

The officer went to the detachment and called an ambulance, but paramedics pronounced Switzer dead when they arrived 15 minutes later.

The court papers claim Telus owed Switzer a duty at law to provide uninterrupted telecommunication services, including uninterrupted and continuous access to 911 services, but allege the telecommunications firm breached that duty.

“The plaintiff states that Dean’s death was the direct result of the breaches of the defendant,” reads the statement of claim.

“The plaintiff says that Dean would have received the care he required within a reasonable time, such that he would have survived the heart attack had the 911 service been operational.”

The family’s court papers allege Telus failed to implement an alarm or monitoring system to ensure 911 calls were being received and failed to maintain an alarm system, if one was in place.

The lawsuit also claims Telus failed to ensure its employees were properly trained and that proper procedures were in place for the handling of a situation in which the alarm system was triggered, if one was in place.

Further, the court papers claim, the company failed to implement a process to alert customers of 911 system failures, failed to implement an automatic failover system to reroute 911 calls to another carrier and failed to maintain that system if one was in place.

Such a failover system is required under Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission regulations, notes the family’s claim.

Telus also failed to report the 911 outage in a timely manner to the 911 call centre, alternate telecommunications carriers or any other party that may have needed to know, the court papers claim.

Further, the family alleges, Telus generally failed to meet the standard required and expected of a reasonable 911 telecommunications service provider.

“The plaintiff states that it was, or ought to have been, reasonably foreseeable to the defendant that their failure to provide uninterrupted and continuing access to 911 operator and service could result in serious harm and/or death of its customers, including Dean,” reads the family’s lawsuit.

The court papers say Switzer was active and healthy prior to the day of his death.

Telus reported to the CRTC in June last year that a review of the incident found 177 unsuccessful calls had been made to 911 by 59 Manitobans from the time the service went down on March 22, 2025 at 8:15 p.m. to when it was restored at about noon on March 24.

In its report to the CRTC, Telus blamed the outage on “an equipment failure on the Bell facilities, that are part of the 911 network that Telus interconnects with Bell to send calls” and that it “does not know the reason” for the failure.

The telecommunication giant said in its report the problem was fixed in a little more than an hour, once it became aware of the issue. Telus said at the time it had disciplined an employee and added backup systems.

Bell, in its own submission to the CRTC in July last year, pointed the finger back at Telus.

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Bell said only Telus, and no other cellphone carrier, was affected with an outage to its 911 calls, after one of its two gateways for emergency calls did a four-minute reset.

Telus has yet to respond to the lawsuit in court. The company did not return a request for comment by end of day Monday.

The family is seeking damages under the provincial Fatal Accidents Act, as well as special damages, including for funeral expenses. No dollar figure is included in the court filing.

A lawyer for the Switzer family did not return a call from the Free Press Monday.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.