Smith v. Inco Ltd. Lawsuit

Smith v. Inco Ltd.

The product and its source. This case concerned industrial emissions rather than a consumer product: nickel oxide particulates released by a nickel smelter. The defendant, Inco Ltd. — later known as Vale Canada Limited — operated a nickel refinery in Port Colborne, Ontario, that was in commission from 1918 to 1984. Over those decades the refinery emitted nickel oxide particulates into the air, and the particulates settled onto the surrounding soil and onto the yards and properties of the community that had grown up around the smelter.

The alleged harm. Port Colborne residents alleged that the smelter's decades of emissions had contaminated their neighborhood. Ellen Smith brought the action as the lead plaintiff, representing a class of approximately 7,000 homeowners whose properties lay near the refinery. The residents' complaint initially focused on health effects, alleging that the community's exposure to the emissions had caused cancer and other illnesses. As the case developed, however, the health claims were not pursued in that form for lack of supporting evidence, and the action was limited to a claim that the elevated nickel concentrations in the soil had reduced the value of the class members' homes.

The litigation. The class action was heard in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The case went through pretrial proceedings before being tried in 2010, and the trial decision is cited as Smith v. Inco Ltd., 2010 ONSC 3790. The trial resulted in a verdict in the action. Inco then appealed, and the appellate court later reversed the trial verdict on the smelter's appeal. The reversal is the final recorded outcome of the case in this record.

The outcome. The case is recorded as resolved by verdict in 2010, with the note that the verdict was subsequently reversed on the defendant's appeal. The litigation is frequently cited as an example of how long-running industrial-emissions claims in a single community can be reshaped during the course of a case: the residents' original health-injury theory gave way at trial to a property-value theory, and even the trial result did not survive appellate review. For researchers of mass-exposure litigation, the case sits alongside other smelter and industrial-community disputes as a marker of the evidentiary hurdles that community plaintiffs face when linking chronic industrial emissions to specific health outcomes. Within the archive it also serves as a Canadian reference point for how a community-scale industrial exposure claim can be tried to a verdict, reshaped by the available evidence, and then reviewed on appeal.

No primary sources are listed in the case record for this entry; the page is based on the article below.