Supreme Court of Canada rejects award in fly-in-bottle case

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the Ontario Court of Appeal’s rejection of a $341,000 damage award to Waddah (Martin) Mustapha, who suffered a major depressive disorder, phobia and anxiety after finding dead flies in his unopened bottle of drinking water.

A trial judge bestowed the award for the personal injury Mustapha suffered, but the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected the award.

The Supreme Court found Mustapha did indeed suffer a serious and prolonged psychological injury after finding the dead flies in his water bottle. It also found the water bottle company, Culligan of Canada Ltd., owed Mustapha a duty of care to supply him with uncontaminated water.

But the legal standard for determining whether to award damages in a negligence claim is whether or not “the harm [is] too unrelated to the wrongful conduct to hold the defendant fairly liable.”

Mustapha did not meet this test, Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote on behalf of the court.

Mustapha “failed to show that it was foreseeable that a person of ordinary fortitude would suffer serious injury from seeing the flies in the bottle of water he was about to install,” McLachlin wrote. “Unusual or extreme reactions to events caused by negligence are imaginable but not reasonably foreseeable.”

As a result, the Supreme Court concluded Mustapha’s “damages are too remote to allow recovery.”