The Calderbank offer to settle has been enshrined in our Rules of Court since 2010 and since 1975 has been the best way to legally enforce cost consequences for reasonable offers to settle. Emerging and imminent injury lawyers alike must understand and apply these principles of settlement. History of the Formal Offer Prior to…
The claimant delivered a formal offer to settle pursuant to Rule 9-1 of the Supreme Court Civil Rules. This was a commercial matter in BC but is relevant to personal injury claims as the same rule is applies to offers to and from ICBC. The relevant portion of the offer stated: In all of the circumstances, my client…
An ICBC injury claim always gets to a point where offers to settle have to be made. If an injury claimant makes a reasonable offer and ICBC refuses to to accept the offer, the Court can punish ICBC if the court award in more than the offer. However, the rules of court allow judges to…
In this personal injury case ICBC argued cruelly and unsuccessfully that a claimant with a meagre income should not be protected from the cost consequences of refusing a reasonable offer to settle. The injured claimant was on CPP disability pension and had not worked for many years at a full‑time job. His disability pension ended when…
ICBC injury claimants need to be aware that accepting an offer to settle is a binding agreement and further requests to ICBC to make their “best offer” will be futile. In today’s case study the court was asked by ICBC to declare that the personal injury lawsuit was settled for $20,000 plus court costs, for which the court…
In a stunning act of judicial deference this keen use of the broad discretion to award costs has allowed a personal injury claimant to recovery the legal costs of a claim despite dismissal of the action. The claimant was involved in two car accidents about 3 years apart. In the first accident the defendant admitting fault and the…
If an offer to settle a personal injury claim with ICBC is not in the proper form and not served on all the parties of record, the court can deny costs even if the offer is beat- Granja v. Jozsef, 2017 BCSC 1087. The injury claimant offered to settle his case for $70,000 before trial. ICBC refused…
This injury claimant made an offer to settle in the amount of $195,000 about 2 weeks before trial and ICBC responded with an unrealistic and meager $70,000 offer. It only took the jury 6 hours to award $294,500 as damages for the injuries she sustained in a motor vehicle accident. This jury verdict was an incredible 4x…
The Supreme Court has confirmed that it is not unreasonable for a car accident claimant to reject an ICBC offer if the medical evidence supports a claim of chronic pain not recognized in the offer (Bains v. Antle, 2017 BCSC 590). This claimant was awarded only $37,800 by a jury but was still awarded her court costs by the…
This injury claimant alleged a number of injuries including brain injury, which was said to have resulted in a loss of about $4 million in capital, as well as about $1,850,000 income to the date of trial and thereafter. In reasons for judgment indexed at 2014 BCSC 2113, real damages were assessed at $77,750. This is a case…