How many of these cases have you read? Personal Injury law evolves through changes in the common law application of accepted legal principles as well as legislative change and interpretation. This article focuses on changes in the common law and legislative interpretation in BC, not new legislation, of which there was very little in 2016…
Awards for pain and suffering are not calculated but rather assessed. In British Columbia personal injury lawyers provide Judges with a range of reasonable awards based on caselaw precedent. The claimant in this chronic headache, neck, shoulder and low back pain case (Forder v. Linde,2014 BCSC 1600) was injured in a car accident when she…
The question in this personal injury case was whether the claimant should be awarded the maximum amount for pain and suffering, reserved for catastrophic injury, or at something lower. On the evidence, the upper limit set by the Supreme Court of Canada, adjusted for inflation, was $351,000. This limit now applies to all ICBC personal…
Many slip and fall personal injury claims in British Columbia have been successful because the judge determined that the owner of a property had created an unusual danger. However with the introduction of the Occupier liability Act the common law concept as of “unusual danger” began to lose meaning and in Agar v. Weber, 2014 BCCA…
In personal injury cases, including slip and fall injuries, claimants are expected to move the litigation along and to name all of the right people and companies in the lawsuit. This dismissal of slip and fall case for want of prosecution (Morice v. Toronto-Dominion Bank,2014 BCSC 380) shows that when delay causes prejudice which goes directly and profoundly to…
In this medical malpractice case (Chen v. Ross,2014 BCSC 374) the claimant underwent a Membrane Surgery to remove clouding and to peel scar tissue off the lining of the eye. After the surgery the claimant experienced dramatic loss of vision in the left eye, and was eventually assessed as legally blind in that eye. The loss…
Pain and suffering after a car accident is often claimed by personal injury lawyers for clients but can the award be reduced if the claimant fails to take medical marijuana? The Supreme Court of BC said the injury claimant’s personal injury award should not be reduced for failing to take medical cannabis (Glesby v. MacMillian,2014 BCSC 334).…
After a car accident injury there is a big difference between a loss that “may” occur in the future and one in which there is a “real possibility”. Personal injury lawyers have long been trying to put some logic to this distinction and now the following Court of Appeal case introduces “realistic possibility” (Kim v. Morier, 2014…
In this failure to mitigate personal injury case(Maltese v. Pratap,2014 BCSC 18) the car accident occurred on Hastings Street in Burnaby after the claimant was driving home from a Vancouver Canucks hockey game. Another vehicle failed to stop and struck the passenger side of the claimant’s vehicle in a T-bone fashion. The Claimant suffered neck and lower…
Mr. Renn Holness has been a trusted personal injury lawyer in Vancouver since 1995 and the following is his own list of the top cases for personal injury lawyers. THE BIG LIST For all you legal beagles out there, lawyers, law students, even law professors that enjoy reading personal injury law and related topics I’ve…