Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Whether the defendant Mr. Stahl breached the standard of care in operating the Telehandler when he unloaded hay bales knowing Mr. Brar was out of sight on the far side of the truck framed the core negligence question.

• A central issue was whether Riverview was vicariously liable for Mr. Stahl's conduct as his employer and, separately, directly negligent in its own right.

• Whether Mr. Brar was contributorily negligent — and if so, how his conduct compared in blameworthiness to that of the defendants — drove the apportionment analysis.

• The proper apportionment of fault among Mr. Stahl, Riverview, and Mr. Brar required weighing the timing, nature, and gravity of each party's conduct.

• Quantifying damages, particularly the sharply contested loss-of-income claim, turned on competing expert evidence about owner/operator and dispatcher earnings.

• Credibility findings, including the limited weight given to an interested witness and to one expert's speculative scenarios, materially shaped both liability and damages.

Facts of the case

On June 26, 2015, the plaintiff Gagandeep Singh Brar, then 24 and a relatively inexperienced truck driver who had owned his truck for only a few days, delivered a two-trailer load of unbaled hay to the farm of The Hutterian Brethren Church of Riverview Limited ("Riverview") near Saskatoon. Mr. Brar arrived after midnight, having been delayed by a weather detour, and pressed to unload that night because the load was untarped and rain was forecast. The defendant Wesley Stahl, Riverview's assistant dairy manager, operated a telehandler to unload the bales. While Mr. Brar was unstrapping the load on the passenger side of the truck - out of Mr. Stahl's view - Mr. Stahl removed two bales without incident, then on the third the trailer swayed and bales fell, crushing Mr. Brar. He suffered facial injuries, three rib fractures, and multiple displaced pelvic fractures, leaving one permanently displaced pelvic fracture. The telehandler was fitted with a pallet fork attachment rather than the more suitable bale spear, Mr. Stahl was not a certified operator and had not read the manual, and Mr. Tschetter (the supervising manager) was in his truck on the phone when the accident occurred.

Statutory provisions and legal principles at issue

The claim was framed in negligence, applying the duty-breach-causation-damage framework from 1688782 Ontario Inc. v Maple Leaf Foods Inc., 2020 SCC 35, and the reasonable-person standard of care from Ryan v Victoria (City), [1999] 1 SCR 201. Employer liability engaged the principles of vicarious liability (the Salmond test) and direct employer negligence, including the duty to provide safe equipment, training, and supervision (Canada (Attorney General) v H.L., 2002 SKCA 131; King v Sussex Ambulance Trust, [2002] EWCA Civ 953; Casbohm v Winacott Spring Western Star Trucks, 2021 SKCA 21). Apportionment was governed by Saskatchewan's Contributory Negligence Act, RSS 1978, c C-31, with the comparative-blameworthiness analysis drawn from Roper v Gosling, 2002 ABCA 71, and related authorities. General damages were assessed using the framework in Stapley v Hejslet, 2006 BCCA 34.

The court's reasoning and analysis

The court found Mr. Stahl negligent: as the telehandler operator he owed Mr. Brar a duty of care and fell below the standard by choosing to unload while he could not see Mr. Brar, whom he knew was unstrapping the load on the far side - conduct he admitted was dangerous. Riverview was held both vicariously liable, because the unloading fell within the scope of Mr. Stahl's employment, and directly negligent, because it supplied an ill-suited pallet fork attachment instead of a bale spear and failed to supervise the work (Mr. Tschetter being distracted on the phone). The court found Riverview's failure to require a Class 1 licence or that Mr. Stahl read the manual did not cause the accident. Mr. Brar was found contributorily negligent: he was inexperienced, insisted on unloading after dark, chose the uneven unloading spot by beginning to unstrap before a location was settled, and worked out of the operator's view while the machine ran. Distinguishing higher-fault cases such as Mahe and Driscoll and the lower-fault case Lovely, the court assessed Mr. Brar at 15% because he both placed himself in harm's way and contributed to the unsafe environment. Fault was apportioned 70% to Mr. Stahl, 15% to Riverview (for its own negligence), and 15% to Mr. Brar, with Riverview also vicariously liable for Mr. Stahl's share. On credibility, the court accepted the evidence of Mr. Stahl and Ms. Gill, gave minimal weight to the interested non-expert Mr. Gill and to expert Ms. Rathje's speculative scenarios, accepted Mr. Marcoux's owner/operator figure of $128,155 per year, and accepted in part Mr. Gosling's evidence that a dispatcher's lifetime earnings exceed a driver's. The court found Mr. Brar's account of permanent incapacity exaggerated, noting he drove a truck in 2021 and 2022, received a citation while driving in 2022, and still holds a Class 1 licence.

Ruling and outcome

Judgment was granted in favour of the plaintiff. The court assessed general damages of $90,000, loss of homemaking capacity of $9,257.30, and loss of income of $201,471.50 (limited to the period ending June 2017), for a total of $300,728.80. After the 15% reduction for contributory negligence ($45,109.32), Mr. Brar was awarded $255,619.48 plus pre-judgment interest. Mr. Stahl and Riverview are jointly and severally liable for $210,510.16 (70%), and Riverview is liable on its own for a further $45,109.32 (its 15% direct negligence). Costs were left to be determined following a call to be arranged by the Local Registrar.