This personal injury case began on Highway 1 approaching the Herrling Island exit when a sanding truck struck the claimant’s vehicle and caused him to lose control and hit the rock face. The Insurance Corporation of BC, ICBC, denied the hit and run claim on the grounds that it was a single‑car accident and that a…
This is a review of an award of double costs against an ICBC insured for failure to accept a reasonable offer of settlement( J.D. v. Chandra,2014 BCSC 1272) . This successful personal injury claimant offered to settle her ICBC case for $200,000 after attending a Judicial Settlement Conference. The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, ICBC, rejected the…
The claimant was injured when he fell while riding a bus. We reviewed the trial decision, Injury on Bus Fault of Driver and Elderly Passenger. The Court assessed the claimant’s total compensation at two thirds of $35,100, which is $23,376.66. This article is a review of the claimant’s application to recover two thirds of the costs of the personal injury…
This car accident injury claimant was offered $450,000 to settle his settle her personal injury claim against ICBC and its insured(Brewster v. Li,2014 BCSC 463). When the offer was refused the case proceeded to a Supreme Court trial and after 9 days she was awarded $418,500, over $30,000 lower than the ICBC Offer. The Judge…
This successful personal injury claimant was awarded double costs of all steps taken in the lawsuit following an offer to settle he made in the week before the trial (Ostrikoff v. Oliveira,2014 BCSC 842). In ICBC personal injury cases additional costs can be awarded to a party if they beat a reasonable offer made before the…
The settlement of personal injury cases in Canada just got more complex. The Supreme Court of Canada has eked out a new place for mediation contracts, in our legal arsenal of settlement tools, that contain absolute confidentiality clauses preventing parties from proving the terms of a settlement (Union Carbide Canada Inc. v. Bombardier Inc., 2014 SCC 35).…
In this offer to settle a personal injury case Judge Funt has done away with the old rule against all-inclusive offers to settle. That is to say the Judge entertained an $250,000 all-inclusive pre-trial offer of the defendant when awarding double costs to the defendant, changing the law and overturning our Court of Appeal in Helm v. Pattie(1998),…
ICBC’s offer to settle this personal injury case for $125,000.00 was just above the $121,600 awarded by the court. As a result the judge denied the claimant his costs after the date of the ICBC offer for the first accident and, having found the second car accident caused no injury, awarded costs to the other successful…
Quick Answer: “A Case Settles for what it is Worth” As a young lawyer I was told by my mentor Thomas O. Griffiths a case settles for what is it worth and was quickly put to work researching caselaw. I had a hard time understanding what he meant because you never know how much the…
Important implications for ICBC settlements arise from this ground breaking Court of Appeal case forcing ICBC to pay double costs for failing to accept a reasonable offer of settlement (Meghji v. British Columbia (Ministry of Transportation and Highways,2014 BCCA 105 ). The court found that it is improper for ICBC to reject all settlement offers above the…