Ontario Superior Court says salt treatment alone was inadequate in circumstances
The Ontario Superior Court has deemed a campus and its winter snow and ice removal contractor liable for breaching their obligations under s. 3 of Ontario’s Occupier’s Liability Act, 1990 (OLA), leading to injuries from a slip and fall accident.
In Merkley v. St. Lawrence College of Applied Arts and Technology, 2025 ONSC 4368, the plaintiff filed a personal injury claim. He alleged that he was walking on a sidewalk leading to the entrance to a campus building with a medical office on the premises of the defendant St. Lawrence College of Applied Arts and Technology in Cornwall, Ontario, on Jan. 3, 2019.
David Brown Construction Ltd. – the second defendant and the college’s winter snow and ice removal contractor – started spreading salt at seven a.m. that day.
The plaintiff alleged that he noticed that the concrete sidewalk appeared wet, but believed it was safe to proceed because he could see rock salt scattered on the sidewalk. He said he stepped on the sidewalk, felt his right foot slip out from underneath him, and fell hard on the ground. He noted that he felt pain and heard his bones break. He ended up suffering a fracture due to the fall.
The plaintiff’s mother and her partner, who had dropped him off at the campus, returned to help him when he called.
His mother’s partner claimed that he stepped on patchy black ice covering the sidewalk, carefully shuffled toward the plaintiff, noticed salt on the walkway that had not melted the ice, almost lost his balance, and warned his partner not to follow him as it was too slippery.
The plaintiff’s mother alleged that she was wearing winter boots with a soft rubber sole that day. She said she ignored her partner’s advice not to follow him, slowly shuffled over the sidewalk, noticed patchy black ice that made the sidewalk very slippery, and found it challenging to keep from slipping.
The parties agreed that the defendants were occupiers of the premises who owed a duty to take care in the circumstances to ensure that the plaintiff was reasonably safe while on the premises under s. 3 of the OLA.
Defendants found liable
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice said the issue was whether the plaintiff would have slipped and fell, but for the compromised or reduced effectiveness in ice prevention due to the defendants using pure salt at those temperatures, without sand mixed in to promote traction.
The court ruled that the plaintiff showed no signs of contributory negligence and met the causation test on the balance of probabilities. Specifically, he succeeded in showing that the sidewalk would have been much less slippery, and he would not have slipped and fallen, if the defendants had used a recommended ice mitigation technique in the circumstances.
The court determined that the defendants:
- lacked a satisfactory ice prevention system for its sidewalks and walkways
- departed from a thorough ice management plan in the service contract
- instead applied pure road salt to the sidewalks in very cold temperatures when weather reports forecasted precipitation at freezing temperatures, even when salt was chemically ineffective
- did not include ice melt or a sand mixture in the salt treatment on college sidewalks to promote traction, even when salt was not working effectively due to very cold temperatures
The court accepted the evidence of the plaintiff, his mother, and her partner regarding the sidewalk’s condition. The court held that photographs, taken by campus security soon after the fall, supported their evidence, and the witnesses did not collude or falsely present what they could remember.
The court found that the sidewalk’s patches of “black ice” were not easily identifiable, which made the sidewalk’s appearance wet and shiny with visible rock salt.
The court accepted the evidence of the plaintiff’s expert that the Transportation Association of Canada’s guidelines applied. The guidelines considered salt ineffective below -10 °C and provided that salt alone was an improper treatment in the circumstances.
The court noted that temperatures were -10 °C or colder for four hours leading to the time of the accident. According to the court, assuming that salt would have some effect at those temperatures, as the defence experts alleged, there would be a slipping risk due to ice melting and likely re-freezing.
