In 7-Eleven Canada Inc. v. Tommy,2025 BCCA 220 the BC Court of Appeal again revisited the doctrine of divisibility of injuries in tort law. The case concerned significant ankle fractures on 7-Eleven’s property in 2018. While liability was admitted on appeal, the focus was on whether the trial judge had erred by treating the claimant’s subsequent mental health injuries as indivisible consequences of the tortious ankle injury, thereby awarding significant damages for depression and future loss of earning capacity. The Court concluded that the trial judge failed to properly apply the law on causation and divisibility, thereby necessitating a new trial on damages.
Divisibility of Injuries
The Court reiterated the established principle from Athey v. Leonati that damages must be apportioned where injuries are divisible, that is, when distinct injuries result from separate causes and their consequences can be independently traced. In contrast, indivisible injuries are those where causation cannot be separated between multiple causes.
In this case, the trial judge found that the defendant was liable not only for the physical injuries but also for her ongoing mental health issues, which were not subject to any causal apportionment. However, Justice Gomery held that this was a legal error. While the ankle and back injuries were causally linked to the original 2018 incident, the claimant later suffered numerous unrelated injuries, such as from a motor vehicle accident in 2020, abdominal hernias, ovarian cysts, and other complications, none of which were attributable to 7-Eleven’s negligence.
Despite this, the trial judge treated the claimant’s sadness and depression as a monolithic, indivisible consequence of the original injury without making a necessary finding that the original ankle injury materially contributed to the psychological harm. This failure to analyze causation and address whether the mental health issues were themselves divisible rendered the damage assessment legally unsound.
Comparative Commentary: Behnke v. Pannu
This case can be directly compared with the Court of Appeal’s reasoning in Behnke v. Pannu, 2025 BCCA 182. In Behnke, the Court dealt with overlapping injuries from multiple incidents and carefully parsed out divisible and indivisible components. The critical question was whether certain injuries (notably psychological and functional ones) could be allocated between tortious and non-tortious causes. Like in 7-Eleven, the trial judge in Behnke failed to apply a robust divisibility analysis, although in Behnke the appellate court upheld the conclusion based on sufficient factual foundation.
However, 7-Eleven differs materially in that the trial judge entirely omitted the required analysis on causation and failed to grapple with the implications of Neufeldt v. ICBC, 2021 BCCA 327, a case that emphasized the need to separate out overlapping injuries when multiple incidents or conditions contribute to a plaintiff’s loss. Neufeldt cautioned that where injuries are divisible, especially with psychological consequences stemming from multiple events, the Court must not treat the entire aftermath as a single block of damage.
Justice Gomery underscored that, absent a finding that the ankle injury contributed materially to the psychological deterioration, it was legally improper to include the mental health consequences in the damages flowing from the 2018 incident. In contrast to Behnke, where overlapping injuries may have been indivisible due to temporal and functional overlap, 7-Eleven presented a clearer case for segmentation, as the claimant’s mental state had been significantly affected by independent, non-compensable injuries and social dislocation stemming from those later events.
Clarification of the Current Law in British Columbia
The Court’s ruling in 7-Eleven clarifies and reaffirms several key principles of BC tort law:
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Mental Health as a Consequential Injury: Mental injuries, even when real and severe, must still be traced back to compensable injuries through appropriate factual findings. The presence of sadness and depression alone does not make a defendant liable in damages without causation analysis.
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Mandatory Analysis of Divisibility: Courts must explicitly assess whether overlapping injuries or consequences, especially mental health conditions, are divisible when sequential, unrelated injuries occur.
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Standard of Review: The decision confirms that the failure to apply the proper legal framework to causation and divisibility constitutes a legal error, subject to appellate correction even where factual findings may appear reasonable on their own.
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Limitation on Judicial Inference: The Court signaled a warning to trial judges against conflating sympathetic evidence of current suffering with the legal requirements for causation. A plaintiff’s current state, however compelling, must be tied through evidence and reasoning to a specific tortious act.
7-Eleven v. Tommy reinforces that courts must clearly identify the causal connection between a defendant’s negligence and any claimed mental health injury, especially where the plaintiff has experienced multiple, unrelated subsequent injuries. However, this decision should not be viewed as raising an onerous barrier for plaintiffs. The requirement to assess divisibility and causation is not a rigid or overly technical evidentiary hurdle.
This decision does not signal a retreat from the compensability of mental health injuries. Instead, it is a reminder that trial judges must make the necessary factual findings and apply a clear causal lens when evaluating overlapping harms. The task is well within the ordinary function of a trial court, particularly given the increasing recognition of mental health as a legitimate head of damage in personal injury claims. This case provides clarification, not restriction, and encourages more precise reasoning without foreclosing fair compensation.
