A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ordered the owner of Burnaby’s Metropolis at Metrotown mall and a security contractor to pay more than $1.8 million in damages after they admitted to security guards injuring an 18-year-old during a detainment in November 2019.
Ivanhoe Cambridge — now operating as La Caisse — and Paladin Security were found to be liable for the plaintiff’s injuries and the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that they dealt with due to the takedown and detainment.
The plaintiff, whose name was anonymized by the court, suffered a concussion due to the detainment, and the court found they had severe headaches and sleep disturbances in the years afterward.
Justice Francesca Marzari found that those injuries were caused by the actions of the security guards who detained them on Nov. 23, 2019 — and that Paladin had only undertaken a “cursory and deficient” investigation of the case.
“The stated justification for the plaintiff’s eviction and the use of force by the Paladin guards was, from the outset, mistaken and unfounded,” Marzari said in her judgment.
“The plaintiff committed no offences.”
According to the judgment, Paladin security guards were enforcing a previous banning order issued to the 18-year-old in August, after they jumped a gate while leaving the mall.
But the court found that the plaintiff was allowed to leave via the gate with a number of other mall patrons at the time, and that the banning order that was issued in August 2019 was only valid for 24 hours.
“The plaintiff was not a trespasser when they attended the [mall] in November 2019,” Marzari wrote.
Pushed down stairs
According to the judgment, the plaintiff was with a group of friends on Nov. 23, 2019, when security guards asked them to leave.
They began to comply, but stopped at a Champs Sports store to pick up a house key instead of heading straight to the mall exit.
That led to security guards following the group, according to the judgment — and when the teenager left the store, Marzari wrote that two guards “abruptly took hold” of them and put them in an arm lock.
“The security camera evidence confirms that the plaintiff was not pushing, kicking or ‘throwing’ themselves onto the ground at this point,” the judgment reads.
After being marched through the mall, the judgment says the guards performed a takedown of the plaintiff just outside the mall.
The court heard that security guards had hit the youth’s face down on the ground and several guards had climbed on top of them during the takedown.
Afterward, CCTV footage showed that a security guard pushed the plaintiff down a set of stairs onto a sidewalk.
That was followed, according to the judgment, by one of the guards kicking the plaintiff in the ribs as they placed them in handcuffs.
“The plaintiff was walked back through the [mall] in handcuffs accompanied by a group of guards,” the judgment reads.
“The plaintiff says their face and body was pressed into the doors and used to open doors ahead of the guards.”
The plaintiff was then placed in a small cell for 45 minutes and had their phone seized, according to the judgment, which Marzari said there was no legal basis for.
“The plaintiff’s mother was not permitted to see the plaintiff when she arrived, and the plaintiff was even prevented from trying to speak to their mother through the door of the cell,” Marzari wrote.
Eventually, the teenager was released into RCMP custody — but no criminal charges proceeded in the case.
Lack of investigation
Metrotown’s owners and Paladin Security claimed that the plaintiff had insulted the guards before they were placed in the arm lock, and had struck one of the guards in the face before they were arrested.
But Marzari disagreed.
“I find the Defendants’ evidence that [the security guard] was struck twice by the plaintiff to be internally inconsistent, heavily led by counsel at times, and unsupported by the video evidence,” she wrote.
In awarding the plaintiff more than $1.8 million in damages, Marzari wrote that Paladin’s conduct was “deserving of condemnation and punishment” even beyond the injuries and trauma suffered by the plaintiff.
She wrote that the company admitted to “negligent training of its guards,” and that Paladin representatives failed to review the plaintiff’s serious allegations and consider corrective action in the years afterward.
“On the evidence before me, Paladin’s uncaring attitude is not a one-time occurrence, but part of the culture of how upper management responds to complaints of excessive force employed by their workforce,” Marzari wrote.
The judge ruled that Metrotown’s owners and Paladin were jointly responsible for $800,481 in damages, while Paladin alone should pay $1 million in punitive damages.
The president of Paladin Security, Chad Kalyk, said the company was reviewing the decision and considering a possible appeal.
“We are both surprised and disappointed by the ruling of Justice Marzari,” he said in a statement.
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