Can a municipality be held liable for gross negligence for failing to respond to a citizen’s warning that children were slipping on icy sidewalks?

There is evidence here that the foreman of the street gang was notified by a citizen about 4.30 in the afternoon that there were slippery places that needed sanding due to children sliding. The evidence is that no particular street was mentioned, but that the foreman took the statement to include West St. When the notification was received the sanding gang was working in some part of the town and was due to stop work at 5 o’clock. At the time the foreman did nothing special about West St., although about 8 o’clock in the evening he did go along that street and noticed that there were slides and that the sand had been brushed off at some of these places. There have been cases, like Holland v. Toronto, supra, where it has been held that when a corporation has done nothing about an icy sidewalk and has been notified of a dangerous condition and then has done nothing further about it whatever, it should be held liable for gross negligence. However in my opinion that is not this case. The municipality was reasonably looking after its streets and had actually sanded this particular one on the day in question. The foreman’s attention was not called to a particular part of West St., but to slippery conditions on a number of streets. In my opinion it is going too far to suggest that, as a result of such a conversation with a citizen, there was gross negligence on the part of the municipality because the foreman failed to put a gang of men to work immediately on a street which earlier in the day he had already ordered to be sanded.