The City of Toronto is rejecting a claim by the family of a man who died in an accident at the city’s Leaside Bridge last year, saying it did not have a “duty of care” and that in any case the City of Toronto Act prohibits lawsuits of this type.
The accident happened on Father’s Day 2024, when a man jumped or fell from the Leaside Bridge. The bridge, which spans the Don Valley at the southern end of Millwood Road, crosses over the Don Valley Parkway at a height of about 45 metres.
Harold Lusthouse, aged 76, was on his way to meet his daughter Tali Uditsky for a Father’s Day brunch when the man landed on the car he was in, “causing catastrophic and ultimately fatal injuries,” according to legal documents. Lusthouse died in hospital days later.
Lusthouse’s family subsequently filed a lawsuit against the city, complaining about the lack of a suicide prevention barrier on the bridge and seeking $1.7 million in damages as well as potential future legal costs,
CBC reported in May
.
“He was stolen away from us … as a result of the failure of the city to protect its citizens,” Uditsky told councillors in April, according to a CBC report.
But in a statement of defence filed with Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice last month, the city “denies the claim for relief … and denies all the allegations contained in the Statement of Claim, except as otherwise expressly admitted in this defence.”
While it notes that, “at all material times, the City had jurisdiction over the municipal highways known as the Don Valley Parkway and Millwood Road,” it adds: “The City denies that it owed Harold a private duty of care in the circumstances and, in particular, denies that it owed Harold a private duty of care to take positive measures to prevent the Accident.”
It concludes: “The fact that an accident is possible does not require a municipality, which must allocate finite resources, to take any and all conceivable measures to prevent such an accident.”
Part of the issue has to do with the lack of pedestrian barriers on the Leaside Bridge, of the type that were installed on the city’s Bloor Viaduct in 2003. The City has been mulling the addition of similar barriers to the Leaside Bridge for some time.
The statement notes: “When the Leaside Bridge was inspected in 2022, Transportation Services determined that state-of-good-repair work was likely to be required in or after 2028.
“Therefore, consistent with the report received by the Executive Committee of City Council, if or when a suicide prevention barrier were to be recommended by a feasibility study of the Leaside Bridge, the actual work to carry out the installation of a barrier would have occurred sometime after 2028.”
It adds: “In 2023, Transportation Services decided to undertake the feasibility study for the Leaside Bridge, and a feasibility study was commenced in or around this time.”
But Lusthouse’s death occurred before that study was completed, and before any planned state-of-good-repair work. The city
continues to move ahead
with the study.
“A family’s life is never the same after something like this happens,” Stephen Birman of the law firm Thomson Rogers
said in May
when the suit was filed: “But above and beyond that, this is an issue about public safety and how a municipality should respond to known dangers or hazards in the community.”
The city’s statement notes two section of the
City of Toronto Act
that it says prevent a lawsuit. Section 42 notes: “No action shall be brought against the City for damages caused by … the presence, absence or insufficiency of any wall, fence, rail or barrier along or on any highway.”
And section 390 states: “No proceeding based on negligence in connection with the exercise or non-exercise of a discretionary power or the performance or non-performance of a discretionary function, if the action or inaction results from a policy decision of the City or a local board of the City made in a good faith exercise of the discretion, shall be commenced against … the City.”
The statement notes: “The decision whether to erect a suicide prevention barrier along a City bridge is a clear instance of a policy decision, made by senior staff and involving a process which includes weighing competing interests, allocating finite public resources, and exercising judgement. It is a policy decision in the truest sense.”
If you’re thinking about suicide or are worried about a friend or loved one, please contact 9-8-8: Suicide Crisis Helpline by calling or texting 9-8-8 toll free. The service is available 24/7. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911.
