This article discusses a recent Court decision and the dangers that injured plaintiffs must consider and be aware of when seeking compensation for their injuries and damages.
Too often in lawyer advertising in Pickering, Whitby and Oshawa Ontario you see taglines like “maximum compensation” and other similar expressions of strength and an uncomplicated rosy future.
Too often people call me and say that another lawyer has, without even seeing a single medical or other record in their case, told them that their case is worth massive amounts of money. They ask me whether its a fair assessment or whether the other lawyer is just quoting them high figures to get them to sign up with them.
I think that its important to be fair and specific when explaining the law and damages assessment both when you are considering a case and when taking the case through litigation. In this article, I want to spend some time discussing some of the dangers in plaintiff injury litigation.
Unfair as the dangers may be, they exist and so we have to deal with them. An April 4, 2018 decision in A.B. v. Waite makes that abundantly clear. The full decision is attached here:
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In that case, the Judge made the following comments:
“This is a disastrous outcome for the plaintiff. It would only have been worse had I granted the threshold motion….
It also illustrates how annual indexing of the monetary threshold for unreduced general damages and annual indexing of the deductible may in short order make unreduced general damages largely unattainable. A review of jury awards in this jurisdiction over the past decade would reveal that general damages in excess of $130,000.00 are very much the exception. There is no evidence that jury verdicts have become more generous to keep pace with inflation.
In conclusion I am compelled by the Insurance Act and the Regulations to reduce the jury verdict of $118,371.00 to $5,760.00. Judgment may issue for the latter amount and I may be spoken to with respect to costs.”