Can a plaintiff recover for slip and fall injuries that occurred while walking along a road in the aftermath of a motor vehicle accident?

There are a number of British Columbia cases in which plaintiffs have attempted to recover for slip and fall injuries that occurred while walking along roads in the aftermath of motor vehicle accidents. In Goodman v. Baxendall (1991), 8 B.C.A.C. 144, the plaintiff was involved in a motor vehicle accident on a hill. After the collision, in order to warn approaching traffic that there were stopped vehicles on the highway, she walked up the hill, but slipped and fell, resulting in personal injury. The trial judge denied recovery, holding the injury was not caused by the defendant’s negligence. This court allowed an appeal, saying at 146-7: [T]he proper approach here is to ask whether it was reasonably foreseeable that following an accident such as this and in these circumstances someone ought to walk up the roadway, and would walk up the roadway, to warn oncoming traffic of the danger of the vehicles on the roadway over the crest of the hill and, that being so, was it reasonably foreseeable that in those conditions that person could slip, fall and sustain further injury? The trial judge found the plaintiff walking up the highway was a sensible thing to do. That being so, in my opinion it follows that what happened here was reasonably foreseeable as a consequence of the negligence of the driving of the defendants and they are, as a result, responsible in law for this slip and fall and the consequent damages.