V.B. v. Economical Insurance Company

The claimant slipped and fell in a grocery parking lot as he was disembarking his vehicle. There was black ice on the ground. The claimant slipped before he had shut his door. The insurer argued that the incident was not an accident for the purposes of the SABS. Adjudicator McGee held that the incident qualified as an accident under the purpose test and causation test. She accepted that the claimant was still holding the interior handle of the door when he fell on the ice. The claimant’s disembarking was an ordinary and well-known use to which automobiles are put. The slipping and falling was not an intervening act capable of breaking the chain of causation between the use and operation of the vehicle and the impairment. Further, losing one’s footing on the pavement while exiting a vehicle is a reasonably foreseeable risk of operating an automobile.