ONTARIO

Hospital Liable for Slip-and-Fall Injury to Surgeon
Between surgeries, a paediatric dental surgeon slipped on a wet floor in a hallway on the surgical floor, breaking her wrist. Her wrist was placed in a cast for six weeks; she then underwent physical therapy for five months before returning to work fulltime. While the surgeon was out, her practice suffered financially. So the surgeon sued the hospital under the Ontario Occupiers’ Liability Act. The court found the hospital liable. The hospital required maintenance staff to put “wet floor” signs around areas just cleaned. But the maintenance worker who’d cleaned the floor before the incident had failed to do so, believing the hallway was sparsely travelled and the cleaning solution was fast-drying. However, these beliefs weren’t reasonable or prudent in the circumstances, concluded the court [Hibberd v. William Osler Health Centre, [2009] O.J. No. 588, Feb. 13, 2009].