Settlement approved in suit over gas-fireplace injuries
A “hard-fought” five-year classaction lawsuit has drawn to a close this month, with a B.C. Supreme Court judge approving a settlement agreement between gas fireplace manufacturers and plaintiffs representing children who suffered burns.
In the settlement, three defendant companies agreed to retrofit screens and provide barriers, free of charge, for gas fireplaces installed over a 14-year period, some of which, court heard, had caused injury to young children. The defendants did not admit any liability or guilt in the settlement, which was approved this month by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Sewell.
“This proceeding has been hardfought from the beginning,” says the notice of application filed Dec. 4 by lawyers representing the plaintiffs, seeking the judge’s approval of a settlement agreed upon after years of sometimescontentious legal wrangling.
This month’s settlement follows a partial settlement in 2015 that was approved, according to court filings, only after several lawyers for both sides “engaged in a protracted, at times difficult and ultimately successful arm’s-length negotiation over a period of many months.” This month’s settlement covers the remaining defendant corporations who did not agree to the 2015 settlement.
Mike Wagner, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said this week: “We went toe-to-toe against huge corporations and got a good result on behalf of consumers.”
“Class actions tend to take longer than you think when you start them, but this was really an odyssey for us,” said Wagner, of the firm Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy.
This month’s settlement is largely the same as the 2015 agreement, but also requires the defendant companies to make a charitable donation of $25,000 to the B.C. Children’s Hospital, to be matched by a donation from Farris.
The lawsuit involved gas fireplaces installed between 2001 and 2014 from manufacturers including Lennox, Montigo and Miles Industries.
The class-action comes to a close almost exactly five years after it was commenced in December 2012 by Charity and Craig Cantlie, a month after the Vancouver couple’s one-year-old son Owen seriously burned his hand when he touched a gas fireplace.
Craig Cantlie said Thursday: “The wheels of justice go slow sometimes ... but it’s nice that’s there’s been a positive settlement to it all.”
“Realistically, it’s probably the best outcome we could have hoped for,” Cantlie said. “We got in this to hopefully just make a change.”
In recognition of the Cantlies’ time and service to the case, they were each awarded a $4,000 honorarium in the 2015 settlement.
They decided not to keep the money, but instead to donate all $8,000 to the B.C. Professional Firefighters’ Burn Fund for the creation of the Owen Cantlie Bursary, Craig Cantlie swore in an affidavit filed this month, writing: “The Owen Cantlie Bursary will be awarded annually to support the educational pursuits of young burn victims.”
The bursary has been awarded twice so far to young burn victims to support their educations, Cantlie said.
In support of the class action, Dr. Cynthia Verchere, medical director of the burn program at B.C. Children’s Hospital, swore in an affidavit she had personally treated or supervised the treatment of “well over 100 children from British Columbia whose hands and/ or faces were burned through contact with gas fireplaces,” and co-authored a study documenting more than 600 serious burns suffered by Canadian children from glass-fronted gas fireplaces.
That study reported a “greater than 20-fold increase over 20 years” in the number of burns from glass-fronted fireplaces, demonstrating “a growing risk from glassfronted fireplace burns, likely due to the increasing popularity of household gas fireplace units.”
Reached by phone this week, Verchere said: “I just kept seeing these kids come into my clinic (with burns) . ... There’s lots of things that we just can’t prevent, but for something that’s completely preventable, it just seemed to me to be a big problem.”
Canadians who own a fireplace from the settling defendant companies are encouraged to contact the settlement administrator at 1-800-801-2521 or through the website gasfireplaceclaim.ca, so they can get more information and find out whether they can get a free screen or barrier.
The defendants have also agreed to pay legal fees for Farris’ work on behalf of the plaintiffs, which came to approximately $1.8 million between the two settlements.
The wheels of justice go slow sometimes ... but it’s nice that’s there’s been a positive settlement to it all.