School division told to pay up for injury

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/11/2021 (1590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Virden-area school division will have to pay out more than $80,000, after a substitute teacher was injured in an incident involving a student.

In a decision delivered last week, a Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench judge ruled the Fort La Bosse School Division bears full responsibility for an Oct. 16, 2015, event in which a senior substitute teacher suffered a broken hip after a student flung open a door in a rush before class.

In the early morning, the then-16-year-old and a teammate were late for an out-of-town volleyball tournament. The Grade 11 student at Virden Collegiate Institute was “speed-walking” through the halls with his gym bag and a bag of volleyballs to meet his coach in the parking lot. The coach had told the teen to “hurry,” court documents show.

Arriving at a back door, unable to see through the high window and having his hands full with volleyball equipment, the teen pushed the door open with his hip, court records state. At the same time, 66-year-old Emma Lou Evanson was bending over to unlock the door with her staff key.

The back door — which led to the staff parking lot and required a key from the outside — swung open and knocked Evanson to the cement landing, fracturing her right hip. Evanson told the court she required surgery and was in hospital for more than a month.

Evanson told the court she remained in her daughter’s care and unable to work until January 2016.

In her decision, delivered Oct. 25, Justice Deborah McCawley ruled the teen — who stood just an inch above the base of the small rectangular window in the door at the time — could not be held to the same level of responsibility as an adult, and would not be held liable for the accident.

“In these circumstances, the fact that (the teen) failed to stop, put down the volleyballs and his gym bag and stand on his tippy toes to see through the small window prior to exiting the building or engage in the other possible precautions put to him when, unbeknownst to him, Ms. Evanson was inserting her key on the other side of the door, does not constitute negligence or a lapse of judgment on his part,” McCawley ruled.

Evanson, too, was cleared of responsibility. Though she could have gone through the building’s main door, which had larger windows, the court learned the back door was closest to her classroom and the judge found it “unrealistic” to expect her to take extra precautions to get to class.

By contrast, McCawley found Fort La Bosse, as owners of the school, bore a responsibility to ensure the building’s safety.

“In my view, common sense would lead to the conclusion that a door frequently used by students to exit a high school, which they were encouraged to use, and which very few of them could see out of, would be an obvious risk,” McCawley wrote. “In light of my conclusion based on the law and facts, I find that the Fort La Bosse School Division is 100 per cent liable in negligence.”

The judge found Evanson had a “constellation of complex medical issues” at the time of the incident, including blindness in one eye and prior falls, and therefore rejected some damage claims.

In the end, McCawley awarded general damages of $45,000, as well as lost income, given Evanson was unable to finish her contract at the school, lost investment opportunities, medical costs and miscellaneous damages for a total of more than $81,000, to be paid by the school division.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers