7-Eleven could have settled $900K injury lawsuit for a fraction of cost, B.C. judge rules

A shopper inside a 7-Eleven convenience store, operated by Seven & i Holdings Co., at the company's headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Aug. 23, 2024.

A British Columbia judge says 7-Eleven could have saved more than three-quarters of a million dollars if the company had just accepted an out-of-court settlement offered by a woman who broke her ankle in a convenience store parking lot.

The B.C. Supreme Court awarded Crystal Tommy $907,000 in damages last September after she tripped on a pothole outside the 7-Eleven in Smithers in May 2018.

Now, in a second ruling in the case, Justice Emily Burke revealed that Tommy had offered to settle the claim three times, first for as little as $125,000.

The convenience store chain rejected the settlement and took the case to trial, where it was found liable for Tommy’s injury and was ordered to pay her nearly $1 million, including her court costs.

In the second ruling, which was delivered on April 25 and recently published online, the judge ordered 7-Eleven to pay double the court costs to Tommy under a B.C. Supreme Court rule penalizing parties who fail to settle out of court.

The rule is meant to “encourage the early settlement of disputes by rewarding the party who makes a reasonable settlement offer and penalizing the party who declines to accept such an offer,” the judge wrote.

Court costs typically amount to thousands of dollars and can cover everything from charges to file documents and access medical records to compensation for expert witnesses, travel expenses and lawyer fees.

The total costs in this case were not specified in the judge’s decision.

Settlement offers

7-Eleven initially offered $25,000 to settle the lawsuit, which Tommy countered first with an offer of $125,000, then $345,000 and finally $250,000, before the convenience store chain elected to go to trial.

During her trial last year, Tommy told the court her fall in the parking lot led to a cascading series of injuries from which the 37-year-old woman had yet to fully recover.

• Read more: 7-Eleven ordered to pay B.C. woman $907K for pothole injury

The judge ordered 7-Eleven to pay Tommy $907,363 for her claim, including $175,000 in non-pecuniary damages, $494,000 in future loss of income, $10,000 in past loss of income, $171,863 in future loss of housekeeping, $39,000 in past loss of housekeeping, $17,000 in future cost of care and $500 in special damages.

“The court awarded the plaintiff over $900,000 in damages, which is significantly more than any of the offers made by the plaintiff to the defendants to settle this matter,” the judge wrote in her recent decision.

“The defendants knew the critical part of the case and a key issue was their own inspection/hazard safety system. That information was readily available to them, and should have alerted them to the potential weaknesses of their position well before trial,” she continued.

“Taking all these factors into account, I conclude the offers made by the plaintiff were reasonable and ought to have been accepted from the date of the original offer.”