Campus and its ice removal contractor found liable for slip and fall injury

Ontario Superior Court says salt treatment alone was inadequate in circumstances

The Ontario Superior Court has deemed a campus and its winter snow and ice removal contractor liable for breaching their obligations under s. 3 of Ontario’s Occupier’s Liability Act, 1990 (OLA), leading to injuries from a slip and fall accident.

In Merkley v. St. Lawrence College of Applied Arts and Technology, 2025 ONSC 4368, the plaintiff filed a personal injury claim. He alleged that he was walking on a sidewalk leading to the entrance to a campus building with a medical office on the premises of the defendant St. Lawrence College of Applied Arts and Technology in Cornwall, Ontario, on Jan. 3, 2019.

David Brown Construction Ltd. – the second defendant and the college’s winter snow and ice removal contr