An Ontario gymnastics instructor who received health-care benefits for a neck strain sustained at work in 2005 has lost her challenge to the denial of compensation for a permanent impairment. The Divisional Court found that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal reasonably weighed the medical evidence linking the injury to Regina Hassler’s later neck problems.
In Hassler v. Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal, 2026 ONSC 6196, the three-judge panel dismissed Hassler’s application for judicial review without costs. Hassler had argued both that the tribunal mishandled the medical evidence and that it prevented her from contesting when her recovery had plateaued.
Hassler’s doctor originally diagnosed neck strain and recommended physiotherapy. She did not lose time from work. In 2019, she sought ongoing benefits and compensation for non-economic loss. Under Ontario’s workplace insurance legislation, that compensation depends on a work-related impairment continuing after the worker reaches maximum medical recovery, the point at which significant further improvement is unlikely. Hassler’s successful claims for separate knee and back injuries fell outside this proceeding.
A board appeals officer set April 25, 2006, as the recovery date, relying on a clinical note recording considerable improvement. Before the tribunal hearing, a letter identified the issue as Hassler’s ongoing entitlement for her neck as of that date. Hassler argued that the wording took the recovery date off the table. The court read the letter as identifying the very conclusion she could challenge. The tribunal heard her testimony, considered her representative’s submissions and examined the medical records for itself.
The most recent medical opinion discussed by the court came from a rheumatologist who addressed a 2016 MRI in a 2021 note. The physician considered that the fall aggravated pre-existing changes and might have caused chronic neck pain. The tribunal expressly considered the note. It found the possible connection insufficient to establish causation on a balance of probabilities, given a ten-year gap in objective medical evidence about the neck, the earlier records of improvement and the absence of other evidence linking the injury to a lasting impairment.
Hassler also argued that the injury only needed to have contributed materially to the impairment. The court acknowledged that the tribunal had not spelled out the causation test. It found nothing in the reasons to suggest that the tribunal had applied the wrong test. The difficulty for Hassler was establishing an ongoing link at all. The court concluded that the tribunal could reach that finding on the record and had given Hassler a fair hearing.
