In his telling of the day that changed his life, Darryl Bold remembers eating a bagel in the railyard lunch room. He remembers a flash of blue. He remembers whispering, “Someone help me.”

The rest is gone.

After 34 years working with a pension and benefits at IBM, then-52-year-old Bold was just a week into his “retirement” job as a temp agency worker at GTA railyard Autoport when he slipped and fell six metres off a train car. According to his medical records, the fall fractured both his pelvis and ribs in six places, bruised his lung and kidney, lacerated his spleen, fractured his back in multiple places, and resulted in a small brain hemorrhage. Bold spent one month in hospital recovering, including over a week in Sunnybrook’s Trauma Unit.

When his family arrived to see him, Bold says he didn’t even recognize his own children.

“It’s like if you get a brochure for a beautiful resort. If you read it, you get a certain level of knowledge of it. Well, that’s what I have for my past.”

But Bold says fighting with Ontario’s workplace compensation board over his February 2010 accident has been just as agonizing as his injuries. Six years after his fall, Bold says WSIB has delayed its decisions, changed its mind on his medical condition, and so far failed to compensate him either for his brain injury or psychological trauma.

“It could end up costing our house and everything we have,” said Bold, who estimates he has lost between $80,000 and $100,000 to medical expenses, reduced income, and legal fees.

According to his lawyer, Michael S. Green, who has specialized in worker’s compensation law for 30 years, Bold’s case is part of a broader pattern: that of delaying and denying brain trauma cases — often driving workers into poverty, despair, or both.

“It’s mostly how long it takes — simply wearing down on families. In probably 30 per cent or more of my caseload, you can see that,” he told the Star.

In an emailed statement, WSIB said it could not comment on individual cases, but said its “highest priority is providing support to help get injured workers back on the job in good time and in good health.”

“The WSIB always strives to make timely decisions and to provide injured workers with access to benefits, supports and services focused on recovery and return to work,” the statement said.

The Bolds say that is not their experience: Darryl’s son Gary says he temporarily dropped out of university to care for his father. Darryl says they had to borrow from their secure line of credit to stay afloat. The entire family says they have sought help for anxiety and depression following the accident.

To Bold, who has still not regained all of his memory and suffers from anxiety attacks and night terrors since the accident, seeking justice has been a nightmare few could navigate.

While the Bolds initially began dealing with WSIB’s serious injury division, part of the delay to their case came because the Burlington family at first considered taking legal action against Autoport, out of concern that similar workplace injuries might happen to others.

Ministry of Labour records requested by the Star show that there have been seven workplace accidents, four of them critical, at Autoport’s three railyards. Seven further accidents have befallen temps placed in jobs across the province by multi-billion dollar company Express Employment Professional’s 23 Ontario franchises.

A statement from CN rail, which owns Autoport, says the company “complies with government health and safety regulations and is committed to continuous safety improvement for its employees and temporary employment agency personnel who work at its facilities.”

Theresa McLaughlin, manager of Express Employment’s Burlington franchise told the Star safety was the organization’s highest priority, adding that the company had a “great record” receiving rebates from WSIB for low injury claims. McLaughlin said Bold’s accident represented the Burlington franchise’s only lost-time injury.

Bold re-submitted his WSIB claim two years after the 2010 accident, after deciding not to sue Autoport. The claim was disputed through two appeals by Express Employment Professionals, his lawyer says.

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It took until 2014 for Bold to be medically assessed; his neurological evaluation found that he had a brain injury and selective amnesia, which was “possibly related” to post-traumatic stress. Later that year, the board ruled that Bold had permanent physical impairments as a result of the injuries to his pelvis, back, and ribs, as well as a permanent brain injury.

But while Bold was awarded $10,000 in January 2015 for his physical ailments, the board maintained it did not yet have enough evidence to say whether Bold was entitled to any compensation for his neurological injuries and requested additional “clarification” on the diagnoses.

Then, a year later, the board changed its mind, and said Bold did not in fact have a permanent brain injury. Instead, it has now ruled that Bold is entitled only to compensation for psychological impairment — even though the WSIB appeals tribunal has ruled that it is possible to be entitled to both. Bold has still not received any compensation for either.

“It just seems like it will never end,” his wife Jane said.

“There is a larger point here, and it’s about how harshly the board treats people with brain injuries and psychological conditions,” added Bold’s lawyer, who in multiple letters to the board has decried the “appalling” delay in his client’s case.

Despite the extent of his injuries, Green says Bold’s experience has become common since 2010, when the board began cutting its $12 billion unfunded liability — the difference between funding levels and long-term injury payouts. In 2012, the board created a separate entity to deal with “secondary entitlement” — psycho-traumatic disability and chronic pain — which Green believes has served only to further hold up claims.

“The board has particular issue with these conditions because they’re more subjective, you might say,” Green said.

“One of the things the board banks on is what we call the drop-out rate. It costs money, time, and wear on families,” he added.

In response to questions from the Star, the board said: “The permanency of a psychological disability, like a physical injury, is ultimately determined by considering medical evidence.”

A recent report by injured workers’ advocates and medical professionals to Ontario’s ombudsman demanding an investigation into the WSIB raised similar complaints to Green, arguing that the board often fails, for example, to approve rehabilitative services for such injuries. The Star requested WSIB statistics on what percentage of claims for secondary entitlement were successful but the board said that data was not available.

Bold, who is now 58, says he has no interest in a life reliant on WSIB benefits: he works seasonally at a golf course despite what he calls excruciating pain. All he wants, he says, is the board to pay him what he’s owed.

“I’m not trying to scam the system, and I’m not saying I can’t work. I can. I can do some things,” he said. “I would like to see the system fixed because obviously it’s messing with me and family, and it’s messing with all these other people.

“It’s crazy,” he added. “You’d think the accident would be the worst part.”