A new appeal at the Ontario Court of Justice from a judgement back in 2017 compensated a then 16-year-old high school student with $40,000 plus a victim fine surcharge.
In September 2017, a 16-year-old high school student, not named due to her age, got her hair tangled in a rotating spindle at the Embrun Dairy Queen restaurant, resulting in a spinal injury.
Grisly details revealed in court documents claimed she and another employee heard a loud cracking sound as they struggled to turn the machine off.
Another employee went to retrieve the shift leader, who managed to untangle the employee’s hair from the spindle. She was stuck in the machine for seven minutes.
The blender with the rotating spindle originally came with a plastic safety guard but was removed by the shift leader, which was “common practice” for some employees and shift leaders, according to court documents.
During one of the high school student’s early shifts, she was told by one of her shift leaders that she was not required to use the guard. She said to have not received training about machine guarding or about occupational health and safety awareness in general. Dairy Queen has an employee handbook, but the student said she did not receive a copy, see the handbook in the workplace, nor did she see the operator’s manual for the machine.
The accident caused the teenager to be hospitalized for two weeks, had to wear a neck brace, was on bedrest for “quite a while”, and received 18 months of physiotherapy. She also missed a semester of school, which she had to complete online.
Two years after the accident, she says she still suffers long-term effects such as numbness, pain, headaches and certain limitations on her usual activities.
In 2023, the Dairy Queen was charged with failing to ensure the employee’s hair was confined and failing to ensure the machine was guarded, resulting in a fine of just $7,500.
Heard in June 20 of this year, the Court of Appeal revisited a decision made. The initial argument made was that the restaurant “must be considered at the local level when the offence is a local offence” which places the fine range from $5,000 to $10,000. On the other hand, at the time, the Crown asked for a $75,000 fine, plus the victim fine surcharge. The justice of the peace sentenced a fine for $7,500.
In 2024, the appeal court pointed out that the judgement “erred in law in restricting its consideration of the size of the corporation to the location operation” and should instead fall under the fine range from $40,000 to $90,000.
With the review, a fine of $40,000 plus a victim fine surcharge “is appropriate in the circumstances of this case to achieve the relevant sentencing objectives.”
Both the Embrun Dairy Queen franchise as well as the PR firm that represents Dairy Queen chose not to comment for this story.
