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: Legal Blog Watch

Canadian Case Finds Children Have No Duty to Supervise Elderly Parents Living Independently

By Bruce Carton

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Via a post by David Cheifetz on the Slaw.ca blog, I came across the Ontario case of Morrison v. Hooper, 2010 ONSC 4394. Morrison addresses the interesting question of whether adult children have a legal duty to supervise an elderly parent who is living independently. The answer? No. 84-year-old Anna Morrison was crossing a street near her home in Toronto when she was struck by the defendant's car and sustained serious injuries. Notably, at the time of the accident, Ms. Morrison did not live with her son and daughter (who lived in Ottawa and Mississauga, Ontario respectively). Morrison and her family (her son and daughter) brought a claim against the defendant. The defendant argued among other things that Morrison's son and daughter "failed to properly supervise the conduct of Anna Morrison and the failure to supervise or monitor her activities caused or contributed directly to the accident." The defendant noted that at some point prior to the accident, the children had sought advice from a geriatric psychiatrist about their mother, and that based on that discussion the children should have forced her into undergoing an "assessment" of her condition. Had such an assessment taken place, defendant argued, "the accident may...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 16, 2010 (boomark / email).