A Vancouver Island tradesman who lost the ability to work full-time as a welder, metal fabricator or truck driver after a highway collision has lost his appeal for a higher damages award. The B.C. Court of Appeal upheld $283,000 for Darcy Baragar’s loss of future earning capacity. The dispute turned on how long he might have stayed in a physically demanding shipyard job if the accident had never happened.
In Baragar v Bowers, 2026 BCCA 436, Justice Horsman, writing for a unanimous panel, upheld the trial judge’s assessment. Baragar’s proposed calculation assumed he would have earned shipyard wages until retirement. His employment history and his interest in retraining gave the judge reason to question that assumption.
Two periods of lost earnings
In January 2018, Baragar was trying to pull over because of mechanical trouble on the Trans-Canada Highway near Mill Bay when Trevor Bowers rear-ended him. The trial judge found Bowers solely responsible. Baragar held journeyman qualifications in welding and metal fabrication and was working as a truck driver and taking on-call fabrication and welding jobs at the time.
In 2022, Baragar took a full-time ship fitter position at Seaspan’s Victoria shipyard. The crouching and kneeling aggravated his symptoms, and he missed shifts when dizziness made it unsafe for him to work. His employment there ended that September. By trial in June 2024, he was working full-time in hotel maintenance.
The trial judge awarded $233,796 for past loss of earning capacity, accepting a real and substantial likelihood that Baragar would have continued at Seaspan at least until trial if he had been uninjured. That award was outside the appeal. Looking beyond trial, she considered his frequent job changes and evidence that he had contemplated millwright training even before the collision. She found no real and substantial possibility that he would have stayed at Seaspan until age 70.
Putting a value on narrower job prospects
By trial, Baragar’s earnings were near what he had earned before the accident, but many of the jobs for which he was qualified now risked aggravating his symptoms. The trial judge valued the resulting loss of earning capacity at $30,000 a year until age 65. That figure already included a 15 per cent reduction for the possibility that treatment and retraining could open up better-paying work. She discounted the future losses to present value and assessed the award at $283,000.
The appeal court found evidence for treating retraining as a possibility. Baragar had testified that millwright work could be less physically demanding. His experts described the prospect of improved function with treatment and a wider choice of work with retraining.
Horsman said the trial judge had explained why Baragar’s future working life was too uncertain to value by projecting a single job’s wages. The reasons showed how she arrived at an annual loss and allowed the appeal court to review her assessment. The court dismissed the appeal on November 3.
Source: Read the decision on CanLII · Court of Appeal reasons.
