The claimant slipped and fell on ice while she was entering her vehicle in a Costco parking lot on December 16, 2019. She opened the door and was entering her vehicle when she slipped on a patch of ice. She grasped the door with her left hand before she fell and struck her back on the vehicle’s door frame. The insurer denied her application for accident benefits. The claimant commenced a LAT application, and the parties proceeded to a written hearing concerning the preliminary issue of whether the claimant’s injuries resulted from an “accident” as defined in the SABS. Adjudicator Kaur found that the slip and fall incident was not an “accident”, as the ice that had caused the claimant’s fall constituted an intervening cause which broke the chain of causation, and because it was the ice on which the claimant slipped, and not her operation or use of the vehicle, which constituted the dominant feature of the incident. This decision now needs to be considered in the context of the recent Divisional Court decision in Davis v. Aviva General Insurance Co. 2024 ONSC 3054.
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