Reference no: EM133418471

Question: One day, when driving from a side street onto Burrard Street in downtown Vancouver, Fiona Ferrari cut off and struck a woman on a bicycle, Patricia Pedal.

Patricia had been riding legally in the bike lane, but she was distracted by some interesting people on the other side of the street and was not paying full attention to what was happening ahead of her. Patricia was knocked from the bicycle and was thown some distance along the ground, where she lay unconscious.

An ambulance soon arrived from a nearby hospital and took Patricia to the emergency ward. Patricia had already regained consciousness when they attended to her and, in the end, she sustained only a broken arm. It was properly treated and healed well but, unfortunately, Patricia was infected with Covid-19 while in the emergency ward. It cannot be established exactly how she got infected, but a few minutes before Patricia arrived, records indicated that supervisors had criticized members of staff for failing to thoroughly sanitize surfaces in the emergency room.

Patricia got a bad case of long COVID, and was prevented from working for six weeks-she had previously been working during the pandemic, and could have done so even while her broken arm healed.

The accident had been witnessed by Mike Mello, who was cycling in the same bicycle lane straight towards where the collision took place. Mike was not harmed, but he was close enough to see every detail of the accident. Mike was shocked by what he saw and was certain that Patricia had been killed by the force of the collision. Mike repeatedly replayed the scene in his mind and suffered for months afterwards from nightmares and anxiety. He had never had difficulties of this kind before.

Mike was a bicycle delivery person for two companies that did deliveries for restaurants that were very busy during the pandemic. For an extended time after the accident, Mike could not work because he was too afraid to get back on his bicycle. As a result, Mike lost several months' wages.

Assignment Instructions:

Sort the facts of this case study out to determine:

If the tort of negligence has been committed;
If so, by whom, and against whom;
And what the possible damages might be.
In your analysis, make sure to apply the four requirements for negligence to determine whether or not negligence has been committed. Consider also such things as whether or not the two defences to negligence (willing assumption of risk and contributory negligence), might apply, as well as if vicarious liability could come into play in any aspect of this case.