{"id":38,"date":"2005-09-27T15:54:22","date_gmt":"2005-09-27T20:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cavanaghwilliams.com\/blawg\/?p=38"},"modified":"2005-09-27T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2005-09-27T20:54:22","slug":"contributory-negligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Contributory Negligence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ontariocourts.on.ca\/decisions\/2005\/september\/C40232.htm\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Snushall v. Fulsang<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, released today, the Court of Appeal discussed the appropriate treatment of contributory negligence in an MVA case, based on a plaintiff&#8217;s failure to wear (or to wear properly) a seatbelt.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The jury in this case had assessed contributory negligence of 35 percent. The trial judge had suggested a range of 5-25%, but instructed the jury that it was free to make its own assessment (which it did).<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The Court of Appeal reviewed caselaw\u00a0from this country and the United Kingdom and concluded that juries should not be given this degree of latitude. Instead, they should be limited to a range of\u00a00-25% for contributory negligence related to seatbelt use.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Interestingly, the C.A. said that the high end of the range (25%) should only be applied in those cases &#8220;where the jury is satisfied that substantially <em><strong>all the damages<\/strong><\/em> could have been prevented by wearing a seatbelt&#8221; [emphasis added].<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The Court made it clear, that &#8220;even in a case where the evidence establishes that 100% of the damages would have been prevented by wearing a seatbelt, the jury is not free to find that the plaintiff\u2019s damages should be reduced by 100%.\u00a0 The defendant, as the tortfeasor, must bear most of the responsibility.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Snushall v. Fulsang, released today, the Court of Appeal discussed the appropriate treatment of contributory negligence in an MVA case, based on a plaintiff&#8217;s failure to wear (or to wear properly) a seatbelt. The jury in this case had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/?p=38\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tort-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}