The family of a woman killed by a falling tree branch in one of Toronto’s most popular parks is suing the city for $1-million, alleging negligence and improper pruning.
Pari Nadimi died after being hit on the head in Trinity Bellwoods park in the summer of 2023, causing what the suit calls “a massive brain injury.”
Her death came after warnings from a landscape designer who lived nearby that the tree was in a dangerous state. Pieces falling off another tree, also a Siberian Elm, killed a man in the same park seven years earlier.
The suit was filed earlier this month in Ontario Superior Court. Its allegations have not been tested and the city has not filed a response.
A Toronto spokesperson said this week that the city would not discuss continuing litigation. The lawyer for the plaintiffs declined comment when reached by phone and said his clients would not be speaking publicly.
The statement of claim names the plaintiffs as Parvin Nadimi, the sister of Ms. Nadimi, and the victim’s child, Alireza Rehmati Aghjeh. They are seeking damages to compensate for “loss of guidance, care and companionship” that they “might reasonably have expected to receive” had she not died.
Ms. Nadimi ran a contemporary gallery near Trinity Bellwoods, a park on the west side of downtown that attracts large crowds on summer days. On July 25, 2023, the 71-year-old was in the park when the branch came down on her. According to her death notice, she died two days later.
The lawsuit specifically alleges that the city failed to warn about the danger posed by the tree branch that hit her, failed to monitor the safety of trees in the park, adopted “outdated, inappropriate and dangerous tree-pruning practices” and failed to respond to complaints made about this tree by members of the public.
That final allegation appears to be a reference to concerns raised by Joseph Clement, who lives adjacent to the park. A landscape designer by trade, he went public last year to say that he had pointed out more than once to park maintenance staff that the tree had been pruned in a way that raised the risk of the branch falling.
In an interview this week, Mr. Clement explained that the branch extended sideways and was bare of small branches along its length, with a large ball of foliage at the end. This made it more likely to catch the wind, he said, and also weakened it.
“It just looked really precarious, this extremely large limb growing out on a very wide angle over this pathway,” said Mr. Clement, who runs the landscape architecture firm DesignLAND.
“I talked to some park maintenance guys and I’m like ‘you should tell someone about this, someone should look at this,’ and I kind got the yeah-yeah-yeah response … they just kind of brushed me off.”
He said he is not involved in the lawsuit and now regrets not further escalating his concerns.
Toronto sometimes touts itself as a “city within a park” and has approximately 11 million trees. The city takes care of those on public land and its pruning policies include a directive to “maintain structural stability and balance of a tree.”
In 2016, another person died under the same kind of tree in Trinity Bellwoods. According to information released at the time by police, he and his wife were in the park and he tried to shield her from falling debris, only to be struck fatally himself.