my friend walked into a window and shattered it.

[dimafleck: the living legend.]

today a friend walked into a copy store. unfortunaly, he walked right through a full length plate glass window. the window was so clear and was in such a place that it looked like it was the opening into the store. my friend got a huge bump on his head, a cut on his leg, and big gash on his hand.

the owners of the store called the cops. the cop said that although it was an accident, my friend was still liable and would have to pay for the damages. my friend doesn't feel it is fair for him to pay for the damage seeing as the window was an accident waiting to happen. (several witness said it totally looked like an opening and not a window).

i know there are a few lawyers on this board...what do u think?

here are some photos....

can you tell which is the opening and which is the window?? the window left of black bar is a window..the window right of it is the broken window..now an opening.

i'm glad my friend is some what okay because some of the shards could have done some serious damage..a halarious turn of events though...JOKES.

[can-o-phish]

I'm sure that any lawyer could see your friend through this without paying a cent and the store owner negible. Guilty for clean windows I guess Glad your friend wasn't sliced and diced.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I would guess that one mention of suing the bastards and they'd be offering up a lifetime of free photocopies

in fact i wonder if they threatened leagl action in order to take the offensive and scare him away from taking legal action of his own

[secondtube]

in my understanding of negligence, the store has not done anything wrong, or shown any negligence.

on the other hand, the patron did.

the stores glass insurance policy will pay for the broken glass.

any injuries would be paid for by the stores insurance policy (commerical property policy through their liability insurance)

patron would have a helluva time sueing that store....as they would have to prove the stores negligence, and saying their glass was too clean...i dont think that would cut it.

Edited January 29, 2006 by Guest

[Lazlo]

Was your friend a bird?

[YearsAlongTheSea]

I would have walked right through the glass too.

And who are they to say it's not a "proper entry point" ?

Walking through windows is a highly accepted alternative to using doors in most 3rd world countries.

[tigger]

Unfortunately , Canada's quick answer in the eyes of the law . Is , "there is no such thing as an accident ."Still I do believe there are such things as accidents and I hope your friend ends up with a happy ending.

[Calamity Jane]

Walking through windows is a highly accepted alternative to using doors in most 3rd world countries.

all too true.

definitely seek proper legal advice. It sounds odd that he should be made to pay when he is the party who was harmed/hurt.

[StoneMtn]

You are right CJ. This guy needs to see a lawyer.

The copy shop may be negligent. The friend of Dima, however, may have also been "contributorily" negligent, which is a matter of degree of fault. These matters are very fact-specific, but there are many such cases where negligence has been found on the part of the Defendant (contrary to Second Tube's legal opinion.) As I said, though, each such case turns on its facts, such as the lighting, the layout of the scene, efforts to warn of the "hazard", etc.

For instance:

Pajot v. Commonwealth Holiday Inns of Canada Ltd.

20 O.R. (2d) 76

JUNE 1978.

ONTARIO

ONTARIO

HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

BOLAND, J.

23RD JUNE 1978.

...

BOLAND, J.:— This action concerns a claim for damages arising out of injuries sustained by the plaintiff, Ronald Pajot, hereinafter called Pajot, on February 12, 1972, when he fell through a glass door in a Holiday Inn owned by the defendant. Pajot suffered serious injury to his lower right leg, ankle and foot. The issues to be determined are liability and the quantum of damages.

At the time of the accident, Pajot was 34 years of age, married with two small children and was employed as sales representative for R. L. Crane and Company, Don Mills, Ontario. ...

They changed in their rooms and were advised by the hotel staff that the entrance to the swimming pool was through room 116. Pajot and his friends proceeded down the dimly lit hallway to a door marked "116" and "pool" which they entered.

...

Pajot testified that he was the last of his group to enter room 116 and the tunnel. He expected to see the pool on the other side of the hall door and was surprised to find himself in a dark, empty room. He followed his friends across the room and stated that he saw a doorway but no door. He proceeded through the doorway and down a cold tunnel five feet in width to the pool. He noted there was water and melting snow on the rough ground in the tunnel. ... As he approached the dark opening to the room, he suddenly saw his reflection and realized there was a glass door directly in front of him. According to his evidence, he saw only his reflection and put his arms out and hit the glass with the flat part of his arms. Pajot further explained how the glass collapsed inward throwing him off balance and he fell through the glass and landed in a push-up position on the rug. His thighs were in the tunnel. According to his evidence, he was not stunned by the impact. He sensed that his thigh was injured and that there was a lot of broken glass around him. He started to back out the doorway and had taken three or four steps backwards when he realized his lower right leg was badly injured. He tied a towel around his leg. Shortly afterwards an ambulance was called and he was taken to the Peterborough Civic Hospital.

...

I do not accept the evidence of the maintenance supervisor, John Bernard King, and the innkeeper, William Spencer Brown, that two strips of three-quarter-inch black tape had been affixed to the glass to warn guests of the danger of walking through the glass door. ...

...

... Apart from the duty of the invitee to take reasonable care for his own safety, there is a duty upon the invitor to use reasonable care to prevent injury to the invitee from unusual danger of which the occupier is or ought to be aware. In this case when determining whether or not there was an unusual danger, one must take into consideration the combination of special factors which led to the accident in question. One must consider the entrance through the dark and empty room, the sliding glass door with no visible marking, the temporary plastic tunnel which was cold and poorly lit and finally the cold pool itself. I find the combination of these miserable conditions ... constituted an unusual danger which directly resulted in the injuries suffered by the plaintiff.

... the defendant did not discharge its obligation to see that the glass door was properly marked. The failure to properly mark the door in view of the particular circumstances of this case, created a "hazard" for the plaintiff when he was entering room 116 through the sliding glass door. As I have already said, I can find no want of care or lack of prudence on the part of the plaintiff and, therefore, find the defendant in breach of contract and liable to the plaintiff for the damages resulting from such breach.

...

Judgment for plaintiff.

[Diggzz]

Ummmmm...is it it just me or did your friend not see the bench on the other side if the "door" that they walked through (obviously not), that would have been my first guess that it was not, in fact, a door.

[Birdy]

i've walked into glass doors before.. never shattered one.

the funniest walking into a glass door that i've ever seen was my poor dog chester.. damn i laughed so hard, i cried. poor guy.

[YearsAlongTheSea]

I ran into a glass wall as a child but didn't break it. I was too young to afford a lawyer at the time had that been the case.

Once my dog ran full speed into a tree. He's a border collie so full speed is quite a pace. He shook it off, stumbled around and started running again. I love dogs. It's their year.

[NewRider]

the moral of the story is: MAKING COPIES AND BONGHITS DON'T MIX!

[dimafleck: the living legend.]

Ummmmm...is it it just me or did your friend not see the bench on the other side if the "door" that they walked through (obviously not), that would have been my first guess that it was not, in fact, a door.

its you....

the glass with the bench on the other side is not what he walked into..let me see how to put this..

u see the orange door

if you were facing the orange door...the two panels of glass with bench on the other side would be on your left....there are similar panels on your right.

the walked through the panels on your right....

[Diggzz]

Ummmmm...is it it just me or did your friend not see the bench on the other side if the "door" that they walked through (obviously not)' date=' that would have been my first guess that it was not, in fact, a door.[/quote']

its you....

the glass with the bench on the other side is not what he walked into..let me see how to put this..

u see the orange door

if you were facing the orange door...the two panels of glass with bench on the other side would be on your left....there are similar panels on your right.

the walked through the panels on your right....

ahhhhhh....ok....the pic was slightly confusing

[secondtube]

my opinion is not a legal one, as i'm not a lawyer.

its just an opinion.

I dont believe there was a breach of duty, but i'm not a lawyer. Thats why you guys get the big bucks.

I'm going into liability adjusting, and will be taking care of this exact situation...give me a few years and i'll have a LEGAL opinion.

[StoneMtn]

It is my experience advising liability examiners (and adjusters) that they do not provide legal opinions. They ask for them.

[secondtube]

you da man!

i'd simply be the person who cuts the check to fix the glass, and keep the injured person happy...easier than court. cheaper too.

I still dont see how he is liable for any damages...

[YearsAlongTheSea]

I don't think the kid should pay, he might want to start paying attention to where he's going. It was an accident. It wasn't like he barged through the glass on purpose, but let be honest here, a large pane of glass doesn't just jump out on you.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I have the vaguest drunk-teenager memory of walking through a screen door - I mean the screened part - at a high school party at timouse's house, and actually leaving an impression of myself, which was more or less recognisable, in the bits of the screen I hadn't torn apart. I think I may have coughed up the money to replace it, but timouse (or his parents) could no doubt better recall than me.

That's screen, though. Glass, that's something else. All I can hope is that the store had some decent insurance and that they can pay out and nobody'll be any the worse for it.

[bokonon]

Was your friend a bird?

that's one of the funniest things i've seen around here in a while

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Splat!

[StoneMtn]

I still dont see how he is liable for any damages...

Okay: The following is not intended as legal advice. I am speaking entirely hypothetically, to try to answer Second Tube's reasonable question.

I am not sure who you mean by "he", but I assume it's one of the following:

If you mean Dima's friend, he could be liable for the cost of the window if his own negligence caused the damage. In that case, if the copy shop's insurer pays out to the shop on their policy as is likely and as you correctly said, that insurer then has a right of subrogation against Dima's friend. That allows the insurer to "step into the shoes" of the copy shop and get the money back from Dima's friend. The insurer could even sue in the name of the copy shop to get that money back. (Practically, they wouldn't because it wouldn't be worth it for the cost.)

If you mean you don't know how the shop could be liable in damages ... If the circumstances were that the layout of the area, or the design of the window, or something, caused the window to be a "hazard" that could foreseeably cause injury to someone, then the shop is under a duty to rectify that hazard or at least warn "invitees" onto the premises of it. By failing to do so, they failed to discharge their duty of care, therefore, negligence, therefore liability for damages that flow from that; ie personal injury to Dima's friend. (As you also correctly pointed out, it would be the insurer of the copy shop that would actually pay out those damages, on behalf of the copy shop, but it's the shop that gets named in a lawsuit if "Dima's friend" were to sue someone for his personal injury.)

Does that make sense?

(I'm speaking hypothetically, of course, and I'm just referring to "Dima's friend" by way of example. I don't know enough about the facts in this matter to really say, and this is NOT legal advice directed toward Dima or his friend, and as always, I point out...

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. I AM NOT LICENSED TO PRACTICE IN ONTARIO. IF YOU WANT LEGAL ADVICE ON ANY SPECIFIC SET OF FACTS ON WHICH YOU CAN RELY, YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LAWYER IN YOUR JURISDICTION.)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Those bold/cap letters crack me up.

- I'm so glad you're there, SM, as a real human being, fighting the good fight. God, I hope you're in my corner some day when I need it. If the world had more good heads as you doing what they did, the world be a considerably better place .

Meanwhile, the world is apparently run by assholes. Who needs that?

Ok. Am toast. Good night. May the spiders protect everyone against the bedbugs.

[StoneMtn]

Pfffft! You may think you like me so far.

Just wait until I get instructions from my unnamed Cambridge-based post-secondary-institution-client to commence a Canadian Federal Court action in trademark infringement against a certain genetically modified rock band...