Articles Posted in Car Accident

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You will often hear personal injury lawyers refer to the term “tort“, or “tort case”, or “tort claim” or “tort law”. But what is a tort anyways? Here is a quick breakdown.

Torte: Noun: a yummy and rich, often multilayered cake that can be made with little to no flour, using ground nuts or bread crumbs instead. These cakes are typically filled with ingredients like whipped cream, buttercream, jam, or fruit. Many traditional tortes, such as the Sachertorte and Linzer torte, have Austrian or German origins. Torte cakes are not legal terms. They are delicious deserts which make for wonderful housewarming presents. 

Torts: Person: John Tortorella aka “Torts” (born June 24, 1958) is an American professional ice hockey coach and former player. He most recently served as head coach for the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL). Tortorella has also been the head coach of the NHL’s New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks and Columbus Blue Jackets. He led Tampa Bay to the 2004 Stanley Cup championship. I do not recommend bringing Tort with you into the Courtroom for a personal injury case. While I believe that he’s a great guy, and would make for a tenacious advocate, his expertise trends more towards hockey rather than personal injury litigation.

Tort: Noun: Legal: is a wrongful act other than a breach of contract for which relief may be obtained in the form of damages or an injunction. An act of injury or damage to a person or property that is covered by a law, so that the person can start a court action. Ontario car accident cases are divided into two cases: The Accident Benefit Part and the Tort Part. The Tort claim is the claim against the at fault driver who caused the accident in the first place. You will hear your personal injury lawyer describe this as the “Tort Claim” or the “Tort Case” or the “Tort Action“. Not to be confused with Torte (the delicious cake described above) or Torts, the Stanley Cup winning hockey coach described above. You can see how people can get confused!

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I was watching the film All The President’s Men from 1976. It stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Paul Woodward (Woodward and Bernstein) as the two Wash Post journalists who broke the Watergate Scandal involving President Richard Nixon. I was watching the moving because Robert Redford passed away last month, and I wanted to watch (re-watch) some of his work.

So much was different with the 70’s. The attire. The hardwire rotary dial phones (with multiple lines in fancy offices). The fact that people picked up their phones. If people were away from their desks, there were no answering machines. You would leave a message with a receptionist, and she (back then it was always a she) would leave the person a note (almost always on yellow paper) to call the person back.

What amazed me of Woodward and Bernstein was how easily they were able to access information, and how few barriers there existed back then to obtaining background information in those days. There are many more privacy barriers when it comes to access to information today.

In one scene, they attend at a library in Washington and they’re able to see instantaneously the names telephone numbers, addresses and amounts of all donors tied to the Democratic Party to elect the next President. With that hot list of contacts in hand, they’re able to knock door to door, or make cold calls. People actually either answered the door, or answered the phones to speak with these guys. Getting this sort of personal information so easily is almost unheard of these days. Getting people to cooperate with you is just as rare.

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There are some great ways which Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help personal injury lawyers run their practice and help their clients.

But, there are some major pitfalls to leaning too heavily on AI.

Lawyers who use artificial intelligence the wrong way will get punished. I am reminded of the decision of Ko v. Li, 2025 ONSC 2965 (CanLII) where the lawyer included in her factum references to several non-existent or fake precedent court cases. In her oral argument in open court the lawyer relied on two non-existent precedent cases from her factum.

The problem came to light during the hearing when the Judge could not find any reference online to the cases relied upon by the lawyer as applicable precedents to state the law.
When questioned by the judge, the lawyer was unable to advise whether her factum had been prepared using generative artificial intelligence or whether the cases she listed in her factum and relied upon orally were “hallucinations” fabricated by an AI platform.
This is a bad use of AI. There will be no substitute for a lawyer reviewing the work being submitted to the Court. The lawyer is ultimately responsible. “The Buck Stops Here“.
Lawyers can use AI to prepare all sorts of pleadings and documents, but, if those lawyers don’t check the work being submitted, they are doing so at their own peril.

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There are so many tall tales in personal injury law. Things which you hear from your friends, family, therapists, neighbours, acquaintances, or random people in your community are so far off from the reality of what actually happens behind the scenes, and the work involved in a personal injury case.

The only people who really know what happens, and how things happened are the lawyers themselves.

There are a lot of reasons for this.

For starters, personal injury cases deal with new litigants, who are unfamiliar with personal injury cases, or how the law works. This is completely normal as for the majority of clients, it’s their first time hiring a personal injury lawyer, or a lawyer all together. When you are new to litigation, it’s hard to understand how things get done. It’s perfectly ok to be a first time litigant. In fact, if you’re a multiple time litigant for a personal injury case, it will give your lawyer cause for concern. You must be terribly unlucky, finding yourself repeatedly in the wrong place, at the wrong time. You will also likely have an extensive pre-accident history which will invariably come up in your personal injury case.

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When an international student or a visitor to Canada has a serious accident in Ontario, it can get very complicated.

Who will pay for the medical treatment? The hospital visits? The ambulance? The out of pocket expenses? What about the loss of opportunity to pursue their studies, or the wage loss from a part time job?

These are really hard questions, and all depend on the facts of the case, along with the coverage of the injured party.

For starters, people in Canada on Student Visas, or a Visitors Permit won’t have access to the publicly funded OHIP system, the same way that Canadian Resident will. This is why it’s so important for the student or visitor to Canada to make sure that they have proper health care coverage before they come to Canada.

Having bad insurance will end up in a less desirable result. Just because an insurance plan is the cheapest, doesn’t mean that it’s the best. Often, you get what you pay for. Nobody ever expects to be involved in a serious accident, but if one happens, it sure helps to have a responsive and supportive insurer; rather than an insurance company which is the habit of denying claims, or being non-responsive to their insured.

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Ontario Courts, along with the civil litigation process are governed by a complex set of rules. These rules are made by people who have an understanding of how the law works, how cases work, and what problems our civil justice system is facing, and how those problems should be addressed.

Every once in a while, the rules are examined and tweaked, in order to better administer civil justice and help the system operate more efficiently.

The Civil Rules Review (CRR) was launched in January 2024, under the leadership of Co-Chairs Justice Cary Boswell of the Superior Court of Justice and a partner at a law firm. The mandate of the CRR is to conduct a comprehensive and complete review of the Rules and identify, through consultation, areas where targeted changes to the Rules would increase efficiency and access to justice for Ontarians, reduce complexity and costs, maximize the effective use of court resources, reduce delay, and leverage technical solutions.

The CRR Group has made a lot of recommendations, which, in my opinion, fail to achieve the goals set out by the CRR. In fact, what these recommendations will bring will be greater injustice to Plaintiffs seeking justice through the civil justice system. The proposed reforms favour Defendants, who need not work hard to advance a claim. It will embolden Defendants to sit back, and really not do much until absolutely necessary to do so.

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Let’s say that you get involved in a car accident during the course of your employment. What do you do? Who can you sue? Is it a WSIB claim? Is it a car accident case? Or is it both?

This issue comes up a lot in the practice of a personal injury lawyer, who does a lot of car accident work.

Let’s make something very clear. You cannot both claim WSIB benefits and sue, and claim accident benefits at the same time.

You you only pick one route. That decision, is called an “election“.

The Plaintiff can either “elect” to receive WSIB benefits and go the WSIB route.

Or the Plaintiff can opt out of WSIB, and “elect” to receive accident benefits, and go the suing route.

The Plaintiff cannot go both routes.

Sometimes, a Plaintiff does not have a choice and must go through the WSIB route. Here is an example of such a case:

The Plaintiff is driving his/her company car enroute to a jobsite. The Plaintiff gets involved in a terrible car accident. The car accident is not the Plaintiff’s fault, and the Plaintiff wants to sue the at fault driver for his/her damages and pain and suffering. But, as it turns out, the at fault driver was also driving a company car for a job. Both parties were deemed to be Schedule 1 employees who were in the course of their employment at the time of the car accident. Even though the parties worked for two completely different and unrelated employers, the fact that both were in the course of their employment at the time of the car accident is significant and presents a barrier to personal injury litigation. The reason is that the law says that a Schedule 1 employee in the course of his/her employment cannot sue another Schedule 1 employee who was also in the course of his/her employment (even for a car accident case!).  As a result, even though the Plaintiff may want to go the personal injury litigation route, s/he cannot do so. WSIB acts as a shield protecting the employers (and the at fault driver) from any litigation. The injured accident victim has no choice but to pursue WSIB benefits. The injured accident victim can try to advance a claim for damages against the at fault driver; but the case will in all likelihood get kicked out of Court on Application to the WSIB.

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Last week I was interviewed by a journalist at the Globe & Mail newspaper (remember those?).

She was writing an article on car insurance, and increasing insurance rates in general in Ontario. She wanted to know what a boots on the ground personal injury lawyer was seeing.

I shared with her a few trends which I had observed over the past 12 months:

  1. Premiums were rising for drivers even if they had outstanding driving records with no claims
  2. Part of the reason which premiums appeared to be on the rise was the increase of auto thefts; coupled with the rise in prices for new vehicles, labour and auto parts. I suspect that the looming tariffs and trade war won’t help in that area. Some reports are suggesting that the price of new cars will go up between 15-25%
  3. But don’t fool yourself: insurance companies will find every excuse in the books to increase premiums. They will deliver less coverage, while charging you more money. You are paying more, and getting less in return.
  4. Our personal injury lawyers have noticed an uptick in uninsured claims.

What is an uninsured claim you might ask? Good question!

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Personal Injury Lawyers are familiar with hospitals. Visiting the hospital in order to see an innocent accident victim to conduct a consultation and explain to them their rights is part of the job as a personal injury lawyer. As such, personal injury lawyers get to know the ins and outs and routines at many hospitals. We also see some pretty weird stuff at hospital as well. And these weird occurrences are through no fault of the people hospitalized. It just so happens that hospital can be very strange places. How so you might ask?

For starters, there are no barriers to entry at the hospital. Every Canadian has free healthcare. You don’t have to pay, or pass security in order to get inside of a hospital. As such, you might have people wandering the hallways looking for shelter, a warm bed, pills to steal, supplies like sheets or pillows, or people looking to scam patients who are not at their best. As a personal injury lawyer, I’ve had many clients tell me that while they are staying at hospital, they’ve had strangers approach their bed purporting to be a hospital worker asking for their banking information. I can assure you that hospital staff are not asking patients for their banking information. This doesn’t happen. It can however happen that people with ill intentions enter the hospital trying to defraud or steal patients. While all hospital do have some form of security, it’s never enough to monitor an entire hospital. And, by the time that people have found out that they’ve been stolen from, or defrauded, it’s too late. The focus while staying in hospital is rarely about money or security because hospitals should be (and often are) safe spaces. Rather, it’s about health, recovery, and getting home.

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You would think that after a car accident, the police arrive quickly on scene to take notes, interview the parties along with any witnesses and prepare an accident report.

When people are injured, the accident needs to be reported to police. But sometimes the injuries at the accident scene are not apparent. They might be tears to tissue which you don’t feel right away. They might be psychological injuries which may not manifest right away. Or, perhaps the accident victim is pumped up with adrenaline (which is very common), and they don’t feel any injury at the scene of the accident; only to return home and the next day feel like terrible pain. So, this notion that the motor vehicle accident needing to be reported to police in the event of injury can be tricky if the injuries are not obvious.

When there is combined damage of $2,000 or more to vehicles or to property, the car accident has to be reported. This is difficult, because the average person is not a certified appraiser. They won’t know the value of the vehicle or property damage because it’s just not something that the average person will know. This is why there are appraisers, because they appraise the value of damage for a living. The expectation that a person know whether or not the damage to the vehicle or to the property exceeds $2,000 is rather far fetched. Nobody is going on the underside of a car at an accident scene with a mechanical light to make sure that the undercarriage of the car is in order. The same can be said when it comes to the alignment of the vehicle. You cannot tell at the accident scene whether or not the vehicle will require a new alignment after an accident. You need a mechanic to check it out. To air on the side of caution, we would recommend that you report the accident rather than not report it.

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