A former Vancouver fire captain now living in Chilliwack has been awarded $1.5 million by a B.C. Supreme Court judge for injuries sustained during a 2015 car accident.
John Mantei, who was 50 at the time, was coming home from a night shift with Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services (VFRS) on July 26, 2015 when he came upon an accident on the Alex Fraser Bridge. He came to a full stop while the vehicle behind him, driven by Rafatullah Afzali, did not. Afzali was going at full highway speed, around 100 kilometres an hour, when he slammed into the back of Mantei’s Pontiac Vibe.
Afzali admitted liability for the accident.
During a 13-day trial held last October, Mantei told the court that while he didn’t lose consciousness, all he remembered was being on the other side of the accident scene, parked on the side of the road, and wondering what happened. Mantei testified that right after the accident he had a headache, felt off balance, dizzy and woozy, and was sore on the side of his head, in his shoulders and his lower back. He was taken to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster and sent home three hours later, with his wife describing him as “a bit confused and disoriented.”
Justice Hugh William Veenstra was the presiding judge, and he heard from several of Mantei’s former VFRS colleagues who called him a model firefighter who loved his work. He earned the rank of Fire Captain in 2011 and served as Acting Battalion Chief as he worked toward becoming a full Battalion Chief.
He was off work for nearly six months following the accident and when he returned to the VFRS in January 2016 he struggled. Mantei told the court “he found it more challenging to track all of the different teams at a complex fire scene. This was something that he had previously found very easy to do, keeping it all in his head, but he was now having to write things down.”
By 2017 he succeeded in becoming a Battalion Chief, but post-concussion symptoms continued to bother him and eventually prevented him from going out on calls. He was forced into retirement in 2020, one year and seven months before he would have been eligible for 35 years pensionable time.
The tipping point, Mantei testified, came when he visited a fire hall in 2020. The alarm tones activated and everyone there went to the fire. He waved as the crew left, and as he stood in the empty fire hall Mantei said he was struck with feelings of embarrassment and worthlessness. He told Veenstra this moment led directly to his decision to retire.
His high ranking status in VFRS and his earlier-than-expected retirement factored into Veenstra’s calculation of Mantei’s future earning capacity. He was also a highly-certified soccer coach who earned around $19,000 per year on the pitch in the years leading up to the accident. Veenstra included $119,000 in lost coaching income in his total of $1,020,000.
Mantai, who moved to Chilliwack in 2018, was also awarded $280,000 for costs of future care, $175,000 in non-pecuniary damages (emotional suffering/loss of lifestyle) and $49,599 in special damages.
@ProgressSports
eric.welsh@theprogress.com
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