A legal dispute between Telus and a Manitoba family is drawing public attention after the telecom giant filed a defence that takes direct aim at the man whose death sparked the lawsuit.
Dean Switzer was 55 years old when he suffered a heart attack at his Fisher Branch home on the night of March 23, 2025. The people with him that night, including his wife and several neighbours, repeatedly tried to reach emergency services. By most accounts they tried around 20 times over the course of 45 minutes, while they performed CPR. None of those calls reached a dispatcher. Instead, each attempt was met with a recorded message advising callers to hang up and dial again later.
An ambulance was eventually summoned not through 911 but through a personal connection: a neighbour who knew an RCMP officer and was able to reach him directly, according to the statement of claim. When paramedics arrived roughly 15 minutes after being dispatched, Switzer was pronounced dead.
His brother Greg launched a civil lawsuit against Telus earlier this year, arguing the company bore responsibility for the fact that its customers could not access emergency services that night. The suit alleges that had 911 been functional, Switzer would have received care in time to survive.
Telus responded with a statement of defence filed in late April. Telus states that Dean’s death was “caused or contributed to by Dean’s own negligence or contributory negligence,” and goes further, arguing he “would not have survived in any event.” The company also denies it had any legal duty to keep 911 running, stating it has no “duty at law” to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency services, according to CTV News.
To support that position, Telus points to its service agreement terms, which it says warn customers that service “may fail or be interrupted for many reasons” and that Telus “does not guarantee service availability.” The filing also states the company “will not be liable for loss of profits, data, earnings or business opportunities, economic loss, punitive damages or any other loss caused by use or failure of the service.” Telus is asking the court to dismiss the case with costs.
The 911 outage at the centre of the case ran for just over 38 hours, stretching from March 22 into March 24, 2025. The question of who caused it remains disputed. Telus has pointed to Bell, which manages the 911 infrastructure in Manitoba, saying the failure originated within Bell’s network. Bell has rejected that claim, saying its systems functioned properly that night and that Telus was the only major provider whose emergency lines went down.
Telus has acknowledged making changes to how it routes 911 calls following the incident. The case has not yet gone to trial and none of the allegations from either side have been proven in court.
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