Judge rejects bid for 311 info in Achillion explosion lawsuit

A lawsuit stemming from the Aug. 22, 2023 natural gas explosion of the former Achillion restaurant in downtown Prince George was dealt a blow after a B.C. Supreme Court judge called a city parks department worker’s memory of her phone call to 3-1 “not correct.”

1075459 BC Ltd. and Encore Promotions Inc., companies behind the Heartbreakers nightclub, allege an operator from City of Prince George contractor Four Star Communications Inc. was negligent in failing to relay Victoria McGivern’s 6:20 a.m., Aug. 21, 2023 report of a strong natural gas smell and a hissing sound at 422 Dominion Street.

“She states in her affidavit that she was upset that the city had apparently not dealt with her report from the previous day, and so this time she called Fortis BC to report the gas leak,” said Justice Matthew Kirchner in a May 1 oral ruling. “The explosion happened while she was on the phone.”

McGivern was airlifted to a hospital in Vancouver due to severe burns and a concussion.

Last June, a judge ordered Four Star to provide a digital copy of any recorded messages by McGivern at the specific time. Two employees searched the servers and found a recording of McGivern, but the call was instead about fires and rowdies at the civic plaza. McGivern said the call about people in the civic plaza was made on an earlier date. 

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Roy Stewart, applied to the court for a search by a certified digital forensic examiner for any files, including deleted ones. Stewart argued it was necessary because the Four Star server had been decommissioned and suggested “files had potentially, but innocently, been deleted from the server.”

Kirchner dismissed the application. In his ruling, he said an internal note was found on the server with a date and time stamp that contains “overwhelming evidence to support the conclusion that the .wav files produced by Four Star are the correct recordings of Ms. McGivern's 6:20 a.m. phone call.”

Kirchner said the Four Star evidence met and exceeded the civil court standard of balance of probabilities “and that Ms. McGivern's recollection of that call is not correct.”

“I have no doubt that Ms. McGivern is sincere in giving her evidence and in her

recollection of the call, but I find that recollection is mistaken,” the judge concluded.

Kirchner said there was nothing more on the server to be searched, “thus no reason to order that it be produced.”