Winters in Nova Scotia are tough. There’s no doubt about it. One of the reasons is the inevitable ice that forms on parking lots, outdoor walkways, and sidewalks. This ice is an obvious slipping hazard that many people unfortunately fall victim to every year. Serious injuries result from falls on ice in Nova Scotia each and every winter, and I’ve been helping people get compensated for those injuries for a long time. If you’ve been seriously injured as a result of falling on ice, you may be wondering about your rights. Do I have a potential personal injury claim? The answer lies in something called a duty of care.
The law in Canada and in Nova Scotia is that each property owner has a duty of care to take appropriate steps to address hazards to ensure that visitors to the property are kept reasonably safe while on the property. Ice is a well-recognized hazard. This means that each property owner upon which ice accumulates has to take reasonable steps to address it. What is reasonable depends on the circumstances and the type of property. For example, the entrance of a busy store or grocery store will require that property owner to be more vigilant in terms of addressing ice in front of the entrance than perhaps, let’s say, the owner of a rural farm has to do to address ice on his or her driveway. But both owners have to do something. It’s just the degree and the timing of that something, and those reasonable steps will differ. Applying salt or sand is usually the most effective way of addressing the hazard. It has to be applied within a reasonable amount of time after the ice buildup. It’s important to understand that ice on public sidewalks is legally different. While there are some exceptions, generally speaking, homeowners on properties abutting the sidewalk have no duty of care to address ice for pedestrians on the sidewalk. Responsibility, then, for injuries that result on slips and falls on ice on those public sidewalks resides with the city or the municipality, but only if they have a policy of clearing ice in the first place.
If you’ve been seriously injured in a fall on ice, please don’t hesitate to give us a call, and we’d be happy to talk to you free of charge.
