What happens if a claimant does not accept an ICBC offer and the court awards less than the amount offered? Are you forced to accept whatever ICBC offers? Is it a factor that ICBC is a big fish in the small pond of personal injury? Today’s ICBC offer to settle case shows that not accepting an offer…
ICBC still is unable to make reasonable offers to settle in many personal injury cases despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars updating their computer systems and firing over 250 mostly managers. The promise of “firm but fair” offer seems to have turned to “firmly unfair” thanks to ICBC. In the most recent case of Sebaa…
ICBC is now forced to pay double costs on behalf of their insured after failing to accept several reasonable offers to settle this personal injury claim. ICBC’s unreasonable conduct forced this claimant to pursue this car accident litigation for over 10 years to obtain an award of over $700,000.00 from the court for soft tissue injuries to her…
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…
In this personal injury case ICBC was denied their costs despite the claimant failing to beat a pre-trial offer to settle. ICBC made an offer of $93,500 to settle the lawsuit on behalf of the defendant 2 weeks before trial. The claimant refused the offer and was awarded $91,700 at trial (Zhao v. Yu,2015 BCSC 2342).…
In this twisted car accident injury case the ICBC claimant asked for $3 million and received only $62,900 for his injury after a Supreme Cour trial. He was also denied his legal costs. The claimant lost his appeal on the issue of quantum but the Court of Appeal found that as the successful party he was entitled to…
If you have a personal injury case in which the Court has awarded more than the offer you made before trial, you may be entitled to double your legal costs. The relevant parts of The Supreme Court Rule 9-1(5) and (6) state: (5) in a proceeding in which an offer to settle has been made, the…
In personal injury cases there are four different types of offers that can be made to ICBC and insurers: pre-litigation oral offers; pre-litigation written offers; post-litigation oral offers; and post-litigation written offers. We can break down written offers into informal and formal offers to settle. This article will briefly explain how an ICBC claimant can…
The Court of Appeal has upheld a double legal costs award against the Province of British Columbia after the Province lost a claim against a private BC company (British Columbia v. Salt Spring Ventures Incorporated,2015 BCCA 343) . Even though the settlement offer was not one which ought reasonably to have been accepted by the Province…
The Court of Appeal ordered a new trial for this 15 year old car accident personal injury claim involving soft tissue injury, mild traumatic brain injury and unaccepted ICBC offers of $50,000, $110,00 and $120,000 (Han v. Park, 2015 BCCA 324). A documents binder allowed to be given to the jury included: a police accident report; the…