Settling your car accident injury case may not be the easiest thing in the world if you do not have a lawyer and you are up against ICBC or another auto insurance company. I’ve been a personal injury lawyer in Vancouver, British Columbia since 1995 and have settled hundreds of cases of behalf of many injury claimants like passengers, drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, and the seriously injured. There is no one way to settle your personal injury case and you should first take a read of my article about settling with ICBC without your own lawyer.
If you have suffered other injuries before the car accident it is important to know that it is not necessary for an injury claimant in British Columbia to establish that the other driver’s negligence was the only cause of the injury. There will often be other background events which were also necessary to the injury occurring. As long as the other driver is part of the cause of an injury, they are liable, even though his or her act alone was not enough to create the injury. Settling car accident claim involving complex medical conditions with ICBC may however prove difficult if you have not established that your injury is not trival and is a contributing cause of your present condition.
The legal test for causation of the injuries at issue must be considered, at best, as a distinct issue from the issue of assessment of damages. The applicable test for causation in most ICBC injury claims is the “but for”test, as set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in Athey v. Leonati, [1996] 3 S.C.R. 458 at para. 14; and in Resurfice Corp. v. Hanke, 2007 SCC 7, [2007] 1 S.C.R. 333 at para. 21.
Keep in mind that the rules of evidence will limit what you can present in a personal injury case to establish legal causation and this will guide any risk assessment when it comes to settling your claim. Legal causation however need not be determined by scientific precision and is essentially a practical question of fact which can best be answered by ordinary common sense rather than abstract theory.
Find out what personal injury lawyers need to know about filing expert reports in BC. Posted by Mr. Renn A. Holness