Rivière-des-Prairies resident suing city for nearly $500K after fall on icy sidewalk
'This year is even worse. We haven't stopped with the complaints,' says Nadya Mirarchi
A resident of Montreal's east end wants nearly half a million dollars for her and her family's suffering after breaking her ankle in three places in a fall on an icy sidewalk just outside her door.
Nadya Mirarchi has undergone multiple surgeries since her fall on the morning of Jan. 25, 2018 and has still not completely healed.
A motion filed by her lawyer states that she has trouble staying up for long periods of time and can't wear certain kinds of shoes.
She is seeking $446,810.69 in permanent partial disability, medical expenses, damages and her husband's lost revenue, after all the time he took off work to care for her.
"It's not fun to go through what I went through, and I don't wish it upon anybody," she said.
Mirarchi said that she and her neighbours had made numerous complaints about the condition of their roads and sidewalks on Pierre-Louis-Panet Street in the Rivière-des-Prairies neighbourhood.
Surveillance footage from a neighbour's home shows Mirarchi walking to her car and falling on the sidewalk. She starts to stand up, but appears to have trouble supporting herself and sits back down.
She said her neighbours helped her after hearing her cries for help and was later taken away in an ambulance.
She said that paramedics had to spray their own salt when an ambulance arrived to pick her up two days later, following complications from her first surgery.
"This year is even worse. We haven't stopped with the complaints," she said.
"Our streets look like rocky mountains — icy, rocky mountains."
She said the morning of the accident, she'd given herself two hours to get to an appointment, and she was wearing winter boots when she fell.
A spokesperson for the City of Montreal said the city would not comment on the lawsuit.
Last year, a Quebec Superior Court justice ruled that the City of Montreal did not take "all reasonable steps" to ensure pedestrian safety in the case of another person who injured an ankle on an icy sidewalk in January 2016.
The city was ordered to pay $30,000 to Maude Vermette Saint-Cyr, who fell on a sidewalk in the Sud-Ouest borough. She was asking for just under $85,000.
With files from CBC intern Mia Anhoury and CBC Montreal's Homerun