Injured party hired forensic analyst to locate car owner, who said he was in New Westminster that day, but B.C. Supreme Court judge added him as defendant.
A passenger on a bus that had to slam on its brakes when a car cut across two lanes and front of it to make a last-minute turn has won the right to include the car’s owner in her personal injury lawsuit.
First Amanda Huettner, who is seeking damages for injuries to her shoulder during the near crash, had to find the fleeing owner of the Kia Rondo SUV with help from an accident reconstruction specialist, according to a reasons for judgment in B.C. Supreme Court.
And that took five years, leaving the Kia’s owner, Seung Jun Lee, unaware that he was being tracked by a grainy image of his licence plate, according to the decision.
The case has yet to make it to full trial, but Justice David Crerar ruled Lee could be added to the list of defendants because of “strong evidence that it was Mr. Lee’s Kia Rondo that sheered in front of the transit bus, leading to the alleged injuries.”
Lee denied being at the corner in downtown Vancouver that day and tried to have the analyst’s evidence dismissed, but Crerar ruled that it was more likely than not it was Lee rather than his wife or someone else driving the vehicle, and he let the evidence stand.
It happened on Oct. 22, 2013, at 8:56 a.m. The driver of a bus travelling in an HOV lane on Burrard Street beside the Hotel Vancouver saw an SUVmake “a hard right turn from the centre lane, right into the path of the bus,” without signalling, according to the decision.
The driver “yelled, honked and jammed on his brakes” to avoid T-boning the SUV, the judge wrote.
Huettner “claims the sudden stop caused her to swing backward, twisting and injuring her arm and shoulder,” he said.
She filed a lawsuit against the South Coast B.C. Transportation Authority, Coast Mountain Bus Co., ICBC, Jason W. Lo, and John Doe and Jane Doe, seeking damages.
Images of the vehicle were captured on the bus video cameras, clear enough to confirm its make, model and approximate year. One camera recorded a reasonably clear image of the plate number, according to the decision.
Amrit Toor, an accident reconstruction specialist, enlarged the image to identify eight possible licence plate digit combinations, starting with 099 and including the letters F or P, M or N and H or W for the remainder of the plate, wrote Crerar. He also narrowed it down to a B.C. plate.
ICBC, in its own investigation, found only two of those eight combinations were registered to vehicles, one belonging to a white Kia Rondo SUV and the other being a red or grey Honda, according to the decision.
Lee owned the Kia and in 2018 was added as a defendant, it said.
Lee testified at a pre-trial hearing that he owned a white Kia Rondo SUV in 2013, but at the time said he lived in New Westminster, his wife was the only other adult living there, he didn’t recall lending it out to anyone, and that it had never been stolen, wrote Crerar.
The judge noted an owner can be directly or vicariously liable for loss or damage caused by his vehicle, and the sole issue at trial is who owned the car.
Lee tried to exclude Toor’s report as evidence, arguing he didn’t meet the expert opinion requirements, was not a properly qualified expert in the field of video analysis, and had no training or qualifications for that role. But the judge determined the final three letters of the plate could have been done by “anyone else in the courtroom.”
It was “akin to the kind of contrast and size adjustment of a digital photograph that a teenager can perform on her iPhone in a matter of seconds,” wrote Crerar.
“Toor’s exercise is simply an extension of the process of enlargement and contrast adjustment that photocopiers have been able to perform for the past half-century,” he said.
“As a result of ubiquitous smartphone and dash-cam footage, such evidence is commonplace in forensic vehicular investigations,” as is photo enhancement, he said in his reasons for ruling Toor’s report and images were admissible and “afforded considerable weight.”
Lee’s lawyer also argued the testimony of Lee and his wife should be accepted by the court next to Toor’s evidence but Crerar said, “Unfortunately, the court can put little weight on Lee’s testimony.”
He noted few witnesses can remember details of a specific day 11 years ago but said Lee provided an alibi that he was driving his children from their New Westminster home to their Coquitlam school that morning. At the examination for discovery, he said he wasn’t sure what he did that morning, he said.
He said he drove his children most days but his wife testified she drove them 50 per cent of the time and she was more likely to have driven them that day because she started work at 10 a.m.
And Lee also said he primarily drove a Nissan Pathfinder at that time and was adamant he bought his Pathfinder first but was unable to show any documents to back that up, said Crerar.
Messages left with Lee’s and with Huettner’s lawyers weren’t returned.