The City of Chilliwack is in the process of trying to get out of being a defendant in a complicated multi-party lawsuit over a massive 2013 pileup on Highway 1.
The 17-vehicle crash on Nov. 15, 2013 on the Vedder Canal bridge sent 14 people to hospital, six with serious injuries although none were life threatening.
Since that time at least a dozen lawsuits have been filed by those affected by the chain-reaction crash, which was triggered when a driver slowed down after seeing smoke coming from near the bridge.
“By my last count, there are 12 legal actions that have arisen through various [court] registries,” city lawyer Sim Harry told the Progress.
Harry said there are lawsuits filed from Vancouver to Chilliwack, involving the provincial government, the cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack, some of the drivers and Greyhound, which is a party to all of the litigation the city is involved in.
The Vedder Canal bridge is part of Highway 1 and the “soil and land of Highway 1 is vested in the right of the Queen and right of the province,” Harry said, pointing to why the city is arguing it should not be held accountable for any wrong-doing.
“Our position is that it doesn’t and it should be released from the litigation,” she said.
The unique circumstances of the accident involve someone burning the plastic off metal wire on the banks of the Vedder Canal directly below the highway.
There are actually two bridges that make up the highway crossing over the canal, and when the accident occurred, smoke could be seen coming up between the two bridges.
“The lead car saw a great deal of smoke,” Harry said. “She applied her brakes as she thought she was going to hit a car on fire. That set off a chain reaction behind her and we understand that there is an allegation that there was a fire on the Chilliwack side of the bridge.”
Chilliwack Times reporter Cornelia Naylor was at the scene of the accident shortly after it happened that day, and she was the one who discovered the fire under the bridge and the burning wire.
Photographs Naylor took are being used by the city’s lawyer to show the location of the fire on provincial land. Still, the plaintiffs will claim that the city is liable in a third party way, and argue the Chilliwack Fire Department did not respond in an appropriate time frame, Harry said.
There may be an argument that the city should have fenced off the area under the bridge.
“But it’s not city land so we don’t have the right to fence it off without approval of the [provincial government,]” Harry said.
The litigation over the multi-car collision is likely to go on for some time, with and “more actions might be lying in wait,” according to Harry.
