Formal offers to settle in personal injury cases, including ICBC, filed in the Supreme Court are regulated by the Supreme Court Rules. Rule 9-1 is very specific about what is considered an offer to settle. An “offer to settle” is an offer that: (i) is made in writing by a party to a proceeding, (ii) has been…
Although inconsistent with a recent case refusing disclosure of the ICBC settlement brief, this case may open the way for claimants to obtain ICBC internal settlement documents for prior car accident claims( Easton v. Chen, 2015 BCSC 2288). However the current state of the law needs to be affirmed by the Supreme Court or Court of Appeal. In this…
Do not do the following when settling with ICBC: (1) Hold back your treatment expenses; (2) Agree to repay your employer’s insurance company after the settlement; (3) Put an inappropriate value on your case; and (4) provide unnecessary and irrelevant documents. You should know that even after settlement the ICBC settlement file will stay with…
In this Fast Track personal injury case, the claimant settled 5 months before trial and was successful in seeking the full amount allowed for legal costs pursuant to Rule 15-1(15) (Karp v. Kalsi,2015 BCSC 1949). The car accident in question occurred 4 years before the scheduled trial after the parties had exchanged documents and the claimant was examined for discovery.…
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…
Once a claim for personal injury is settled there is often post settlement negotiations to award the reasonable case costs. This post settlement negotiation can have a dramatic impact on the money a claimant gets in their pocket after fees, expenses and taxes. In this personal injury case the defendants served the claimant with an…
When making an offer to settle a personal injury case with ICBC it is important serve the offer to settle on all parties of record. In BC Personal injury cases there are usually two main claims that need to be settled: tort and Part VII. The tort claim is the negligence claim against the at…
A new standard for settlement proposals and settlement agreements has been set by the BC Court of Appeal . In a dispute over whether a family law case was settled the court required the trial judge to analyze the evidence of the settlement agreement in light of all the material facts to determine the entire scope of…
ICBC has a statutory monopoly on third party automobile liability insurance coverage in BC and appears to be manipulating this monopoly in ominous new ways, testing our courts sense of justice. The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia has been systematically refusing to pay for necessary medical and other expert opinion upon settlement of cases to…
This modest out of court motor vehicle accident settlement with ICBC concerned, in part, the costs of a Functional Capacity Evaluation (“FCE”) set up by the claimant’s personal injury lawyer. The claimant suffered soft tissue injuries to his neck and upper back after the accident and had ongoing left shoulder pain. If the matter did not settle…