Icy legal realities

>> Montreal plays hardball with those who suffer street injuries

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

It was late in the lunch hour when Céline Boucher left her home in Tetreaultville, at the mouth of the Lafontaine tunnel, on Feb. 17, 2000. A 15-foot-tall industrial snowblower started tossing snow and ice toward a truck. It misfired and hammered Boucher with 300 pounds of force. "I was totally buried," says the 37-year-old former waitress.

Boucher suffered a concussion, lesions in her neck bones and lost the strength in her right arm. After spending the weekend in an amnesiac haze, Boucher called the City of Montreal to complain about the accident but was reprimanded for waiting the weekend to call.

"The city sent me to the SAAQ [license bureau] to complain. They, in turn, told me, 'That's ridiculous, you should be complaining to the city.'" During her three-month convalescence, Boucher lost her $450 a week job at the Jardins Hochelaga. Meanwhile, the city has refused to compensate Boucher, who says she's planning a $5,000 lawsuit. "They have to be responsible for their own actions," says Boucher. "If I broke something on the street, like a pot of flowers, the city would come back and ask me for the money."

Fractious filmmaker

In a city where ice and snow often cause physical injury, every year injured citizens get into a game of legal chicken with city authorities. "I had assumed there was a budget for this sort of thing," says Francis Miquet, whose Italian hiking boots were unable to grip an unsalted frozen puddle last year causing the fit 40 year old to suffer a triple fracture in his left leg. The accident occurred during a freak April storm, a time when the city had openly admitted to having put away all of its snow clearing equipment.

Although the city was seemingly to blame, the filmmaker's claims for compensation were refused outright. He suspects it's because he had taken a taxi rather than an ambulance to St-Mary's hospital. The subsequent lack of witnesses emboldened the city to challenge his claim. Rather than compensation, Miquet ended up with an $80 ambulance bill for the ride home.

This year, a slippery February featured rain followed by cold temperatures prompting 31 claims for "slip and falls." It's up from last year, but low compared to the disastrous first 60 days of 1998 when 154 claims were made.

If you suspect that sidewalks have become icier in recent years, you're right. "We could make it so there's no ice anywhere," says André Lazure of the city's Public Works department. The city has cut back on salt and currently uses 90-million tons a year. At $62 per ton, the salt takes a serious chunk of the city's $66-million snow removal budget, which has frequently been criticized as miserly.

But Lazure says it's not a money thing. "During the '60s and '70s the city was white with salt but people complained that it ruined their clothes, their cars, their fences and there were environmental concerns. There was a lot of demand to cut down."

Pedestrians are forced to suffer the burden of consequent slipperiness because the heavier ice-clearing equipment can't manoeuvre on the city's 3,500 kilometres of sidewalks. The city's 210 small sidewalk cleaners often break their shovels on sidewalks if they attempt to scrape ice too vigorously, says Lazure.

How to cash in

Unlike other municipalities, Montreal does not refer claims to city insurers. Bureaucrats will often offer settlements just to stay out of court, according to city communications officer André Lapointe. "For example, if someone falls during a freezing rainstorm, there's nothing we can do. Even if we put salt, the rain will wash it away. In those cases we usually deny responsibility," says Lapointe.

People who have injured themselves and believe it to be the city's fault must act within 30 days, while other municipalities demand notification within 15 days. Letters can be faxed to the city, mailed, or filled out at any Access Montreal office.

Rejected claims include one from a man who laid down on the grass in Lafontaine Park and was unhappy with his skin after he got up. "He wanted compensation for bad grass," says Lapointe. Sending in dry-cleaning bills for slush on clothes, or taxi receipts for ice-averting trips also get nothing, he says. However, those who break bones will routinely be offered $350 in exchange for the promise not to sue.

When asked about the city-paid compensation following a dozen deaths involving snow clearing trucks on city streets during 1996 and 1997--a situation sometimes linked to the reckless driving of subcontractors paid to work fast--Lapointe referred the Mirror to another office which did not return calls.