Can a municipality be held liable in negligence for its policy decisions?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Dyal v Township of Langley, 2018 BCCRT 469 (CanLII):
14. The above amounts to the distinction between operational decisions versus policy decisions (see also Just v. British Columbia, 1989 CanLII 16 (SCC), [1989] 2 S.C.R. 1228). A municipality cannot be held liable in negligence for its policy decisions, but it can be for its operational decisions. In Just, the court held that when a government is supplying services, it is subject to ordinary negligence principles. It is not disputed that if in carrying out its own policy, the respondent could be held negligent if its operational duty is not performed with reasonable care (City of Kamloops v. Nielsen, 1984 CanLII 21 (SCC)).
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