Glass particles entered employee's eye during a workplace incident
The British Columbia Supreme Court has upheld the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal (WCAT)’s certification of an action upon finding that the parties were an employer and three of its employees, one of whom suffered injuries arising from her employment.
In Andreasen v British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal), 2025 BCSC 1294, the petitioner began working at Malahat Nation’s band office on reserve lands near Mill Bay on Vancouver Island in June 2015.
In March 2019, while the petitioner was in the office, an inebriated Malahat Nation community member assaulted her, rudely spoke to her, and broke a bottle of alcohol in the reception area, causing tiny glass particles to enter her right eye.
The petitioner, who has not returned to work since July 2019, filed a claim with the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB). In November 2019, the Board accepted her claim under what is now s. 135(1) of BC’s Workers Compensation Act, 2019 (WCA).
She received wage loss benefits, vocational rehabilitation benefits, and permanent disability benefits. In August 2020, she came to the BC Supreme Court with a civil claim alleging contractual breach and the torts of defamation, unlawful interference with economic relations, intentional infliction of mental stress, negligent infliction of mental stress, and conspiracy to injure.
The respondents – the employer, its chief administrative officer, and its finance director – asked the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal (WCAT) to certify the case under s. 311 of the WCA. That provision permitted a party to seek certification of a court action based on personal injury, death, or disability caused by occupational disease.
Under s. 127 of the WCA, a statutory bar to a court action existed if the employer’s or employee’s action or conduct arising out of and in the course of employment breached the duty of care to another worker.
The respondents acknowledged that s. 311 excluded the petitioner’s claims for wrongful or constructive dismissal from certification.
In January 2024, a WCAT panel found that Malahat Nation was the employer and the parties were its employees when the petitioner’s causes of action arose. The panel concluded that any personal injury to the petitioner arose out of and in the course of her employment, which WCAT had the jurisdiction to certify.
The panel noted that the petitioner alleged various personal injuries, including mental distress, humiliation, anxiety, insomnia, fear, anxiety, depression, severe ongoing distrust, loss of dignity, and serious injury to her character, credit, and reputation.
Certification upheld
The petitioner filed a petition seeking judicial review of the WCAT decision. The Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed the petition for judicial review and claims for relief.
The petitioner argued that the WCAT panel unreasonably considered her personal injury claims work-related, given that her causes of action for defamation, conspiracy, and intentional interference with economic relations, among others, happened after July 2019, when she was no longer working for the employer or receiving compensation.
The court deemed the panel’s decision rational and tied to the evidence rather than patently unreasonable. The court ruled that the petitioner’s allegations arose from her employment with the employer.
The court found that the petitioner’s claims concerned her workplace assault, her attempts to secure benefits after she stopped reporting for work, and allegations that her former employer supposedly made against her to the WCB, the professional regulator, and others.
The court noted that the question of whether the employer was compensating the petitioner when her causes of action arose was just one factor among others to consider. The court added that the panel’s decision was procedurally fair and not abusive of process.
