Since 2010, Holness and Small Law Group has written over 1000 legal blog articles. We believe that staying informed and current with personal injury news and case developments is essential to providing proper legal services to our clients when advocating for their rights.
Even if an injury claimant wins at trial in an ICBC injury claim, defendant’s have a right of appeal. In this case even though the defendant lost at trial they alleged that the trial judge was wrong and should have blamed the claimant for her own injuries (failure to mitigate) and should have drawn an adverse…
This 36 year old injury claimant sought an order requiring Empire Life Insurance Company to pay her long-term disability benefits as the insurance company refused to pay the disability benefits (Tanious v. The Empire Life Insurance Company,2016 BCSC 110). The retroactive value of the claim was no more than $60,000, after making appropriate deductions for taxes and CPP…
The purpose of an award for pain and suffering, called “non-pecuniary damages”, is to provide money compensation that ameliorates the condition of an injured claimant. In making such an award, the following factors are relevant: age of the claimant; nature of the injury;severity and duration of pain; disability; emotional suffering; loss or impairment of life; impairment of family, marital and social…
A Supreme Court Master refused to force this injury claimant to submit to an ICBC medical examination on two separate occasions and the Master awarded her costs. The judge made a substantial award of damages in this car accident injury case and awarded the claimant to costs at Scale B but denied her costs of defending these two…
In this medical malpractice case the claimant mother was 28 weeks pregnant when she presented in the emergency room complaining of neck pain. She was seen by a registered nurse and a family practitioner and was discharged with recommendation for massage therapy. She suffered seizures soon thereafter and underwent an emergency caesarean section. The claimant child was born with significant disability.…
Business owners don’t have to provide safe chairs under the Occupier Liability Act(OLA) because chairs are not covered by this piece of legislation. The bank in this injury case provided the claimant with a chair to sit on to conduct his banking business. There was no invitation, express or implied, to use the chair for anything beyond…
In this personal injury case ICBC made an application to force the claimant to sign authorizations for the production of certain medical records (Gee v. Basra,2015 BCSC 2495) . The order sought was: That within seven days of the date of this order the plaintiff do provide to counsel for the defendants, or alternatively do provide…
Voluntary payments made by ICBC to victims of personal injury is a signal that the current system is inadequate. Without ICBC advanced payments made on the basis of third party liability coverage many claimants would not be able to survive after an accident related injury. Here are 3 basic accident benefits you can expect if you…
It is not surprising that in a free and democratic society we should have a public right to an open court process. Having truly a open court ensures that common values are being applied within all our British Columbia judicial proceedings. Openness is essential to accessibility and accountability in the judicial system. However, personal injury…
Developments in personal injury law for 2015 are exciting and range from the new and approved claim of moral injury to new limits on sanctions that can be leveled against injury claimants. ICBC claimants that fail to accept a reasonable offer no longer have to pay double costs and Masters cannot impose financially crippling sanctions against claimants in the document…