Wednesday, Jun 25, 2008
The Toronto Star
Worker can sue after ruling in wrongful arrest case
The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that a worker wrongfully arrested for theft can sue a private security firm for negligence.
Aston Associates Investigations Ltd., a private security firm, sent some of its employees undercover at the Canac Kitchens plant in Woodbridge to investigate alleged drug dealing. One of the reports in the undercover operation identified "Joe Portuguese, 5'11' ... 180 lbs., mid 20s" as a suspected thief.
The security firm subsequently identified Joao Correia as "Joe Portuguese". Mr. Correia was fired, arrested, handcuffed and held in police detention for three hours.
However, Mr. Correia was not only completely innocent, he was 62 years old - some 40 years older than the suspect identified in the report. He had been confused with an employee who had a similar name, but who was almost 40 years younger.
Nevertheless, it took four months for the Crown to drop the charges.
In a unanimous decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal decided that the right to sue police for negligent investigations, recognized just last year by the Supreme Court of Canada in Hill v. Hamilton Wentworth Regional Police Services Board, should be extended to private security companies. Private security companies should be subject to similar liability, the Court said, because they are taking on many of the functions once performed exclusively by the police and there ought to be some way for members of the public to seek compensation if a mistake is made.
The Star noted that SGM's Louis Sokolov played a key role in the landmark Hill case that established the right to sue police for negligent investigation. Louis told the Star that it was significant the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected the private security company's argument that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would have a "chilling effect," leaving private security firms reluctant to embark on investigations for fear of lawsuits. The same claims were raised, and rejected, in the Hill case.
While making it clear that not every mistake made during an investigation will automatically be grounds for a lawsuit, the decision "is clearly in touch with workplace realities, in which quasi-criminal justice functions are often outsourced to private security firms," Sokolov said.
