‘ My anger ... will never pass’
Quebec motorist wants SQ to be held accountable over reaction to crash
Gilles Gargantiel was knocked unconscious when his new Pontiac G3 left the road and landed in a ditch in 2009.
Nobody had witnessed the crash on the rural stretch of highway, but he was not completely defenceless — the car was equipped with an On-Star system that sent an automatic alert when the airbags deployed.
Less than 15 minutes after the crash, an OnStar operator had advised the Sûreté du Québec of the accident, providing precise GPS coordinates. But transcripts of calls between the SQ dispatcher and officers reveal that after spotting nothing, the police quickly grew annoyed with OnStar’s entreaties.
“We won’t start driving around all night to find out where the car is because they’re involved,” the dispatcher said at one point. “A needle in a haystack,” an unnamed officer replied, offering the theory that the missing driver was simply getting drunk in a farmer’s backyard.
In fact, Gargantiel was gravely injured, with a fractured neck, six broken ribs and two broken vertebrae.
It was Oct. 18, and the nights were already cold. Police abandoned their search two hours after the crash, and it was 40 hours later that a train engineer noticed the car in the ditch between the tracks and Highway 148 in Quebec’s Outaouais region.
Gargantiel was found face down on the ground about 30 metres from his car, dehydrated and suffering from hypothermia and frostbite that would necessitate the amputation of his right foot.
He spent seven months in rehabilitation and still suffers physical and psychological effects, but last week he learned his attempt to sue the province for negligence had suffered another setback.
The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled Feb. 9 that because the amputation was related to the car accident, he is not entitled to any compensation beyond what is provided under Quebec’s no- fault insurance regime.
“It’s just so illogical,” Gargantiel said Monday in an interview from his home in Gatineau, Que. “Six years after the crash, I still can’t actually believe how the SQ reacted.”
Transcripts entered into evidence during the initial trial depict an impatient police force convinced it was dealing with a false alarm.
“OnStar called again,” a dispatcher told an officer involved in the search.
“Should we file a harassment complaint against them?” the unnamed officer flippantly replied.
Later an officer told the dispatcher he didn’t want to hear about OnStar anymore. “I’m fed up with that nonsense ... I missed my supper hour ... This is the third time I deal with them for nonsense. I can’t take it any more.”
Gargantiel, 47, submitted medical evidence to show that the amputation was a direct result of the frostbite, and his lawyers argued the frostbite was caused by police negligence, not by the car crash.
The three- judge Court of Appeal panel concluded Quebec’s Automobile Insurance Act, which provides compensation to victims but prevents them from suing for damages, is sweeping enough to cover Gargantiel’s amputation.
Guy Poitras, a commercial litigator with the law firm Gowlings, said he is not surprised by the court’s decision. In the past, courts have ruled that injuries connected to a motor vehicle, even tenuously, are covered by the Automobile Insurance Act.
“In Quebec, the protection offered by the law is very ironclad,” he said. “In the recent case law, I have never seen the law being softened.”
Leonard Kliger, a Montreal lawyer who represented Gargantiel, said he is considering seeking leave to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. He said Gargantiel’s case demonstrates a “clear break in the causal connection between the automobile accident and other injuries that result from a third party.”
Gargantiel, who before the accident was an avid skier and a tennis instructor, said his life is forever changed.
“I’ve got a prosthetic, but it’s not even comparable,” he said.
He received a lump- sum payment of $ 104,000 from Quebec’s automobile- insurance board for loss of enjoyment of life and psychological and physical suffering and gets an additional $ 16,000 a year for lost income. He was seeking nearly $ 1 million in damages in his lawsuit.
He would like to see the SQ officers held accountable for their failure to find him after the crash. “My anger toward the police, it will never pass,” he said.