Articles Posted in Car Accident

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One of the most commonly asked questions of our personal injury lawyers is how innocent car accident victims can get the insurance company to pay for their medical/rehab treatment following a car accident. This involves the proposed service provider completing the OCF-18 Treatment Plan Form.The Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog has already written on the topic of completing the OCF-18 Treatment Plan Form. This previous entry can be accessed here. But, since this question is asked of us so much, we thought it would be of great use to re-visit the topic. After all; getting the car insurer to pay for your post accident treatment is important to your rehabilitation and peace of mind. It certainly seems unfair if you would have to pay for the treatment out of your own pocket when you’re not able to earn an income following a serious collision.

Treatment payments are generally covered after a car accident through Ontario’s No Fault Accident Benefit regime. But, the accident benefit scheme is very complicated and can be very tricky to manage on your own. Even for lawyers, the system is tricky.

For starters, the first form that needs to be completed is the OCF-1 Application for Accident Benefits. This form opens up an accident benefit claim for the insurance company. Once an accident benefit claim has been opened, you’re then eligible for med/rehab benefits such that the insurer ought to pay for the cost of your treatment.

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Three words that can get any Ontarian excited are “August Long Weekend“!

Our personal injury law firm has seen a pattern over the past 8 years of a spike in new client calls after the long weekend in the following areas:

  • Drunk Driving & Drunk Boating cases
  • Fatality Claims (they happen nearly every long weekend)
  • Car Accident claims related to speed
  • Violent Assault claims (alcohol related)

So what happens over the long weekend that we see an increase in personal injury claims? Does everyone lose their mind or is it just bad luck? Are many of these accidents preventable? All good questions.

For starters, lots of people get excited for a summer long weekend. Why not? Fun in the sun after a long, cold Canadian winter. It’s perfectly reasonable to get excited.

Lots of people travel over the long weekend. They get out of town and go visit friends, go to a cottage, go camping etc. That means more people on the roads with places to go and destinations in mind. And those people travelling on the road want to arrive at their respective destinations as soon as possible so their long weekend can begin. For most, the long weekend doesn’t officially begin until you’ve arrived at your destination.

This means a greater likelihood of speeding. We all know that speeding increased the chance of car accidents, and car accidents at higher speeds normally equate to more severe damages and injuries. That’s not to say that car accidents at lower speeds cannot result in serious damages or serious injuries either.

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For anyone who practices in the field of accident benefit law (dare I now call it litigation), what we all need is more paper work, more records, and more forms to be completed by insureds, and insurers alike. What is already a complicated and confusing system has been rendered even more complex with the shift of accident benefit disputes from the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) to the Safety, Licensing Appeals and Standards Tribunals of Ontario (SLASTO) License Appeals Tribunal (LAT). How’s that for a mouthful?

Accident benefits, at their most basic, are designed to protect an insured accident victims following a motor vehicle accident. The Insurance Act is consumer protection legislation supposedly aimed to help rehabilitate and make ends meet for somebody whose livelihood and health has been impaired in an accident. Items in dispute can range from simple physiotherapy treatment, to weekly income replacement benefits, to more complicated catastrophic disputes.

Since 1997, FSCO has been hearing accident benefit disputes between injured car accident victims and their accident benefit insurers. FSCO was mandated to hear these types of cases. FSCO had its own mediators, arbitrators, practice code and a wealth of case law built over the years to guide the public and insurers. Continue reading →

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Mediation is a popular tool used by lawyers to settle personal injury cases in Ontario. In some jurisdictions (Toronto, Windsor and Ottawa) mediating a personal injury case is mandatory before it can proceed to trial. The Insurance Act also contains provisions requiring mediation for an accident benefit dispute in Ontario. Some Courts have even found that a car insurer’s refusal to participate in a mediation is bad faith claims handling and awarded the Plaintiff damages in this regard.

Whether or not a mediation is mandatory; this does not change what a mediation is, and how mediation works.

If you have never mediated a case before, don’t worry. You’re not alone. 99% of our clients have never participated in a formal, legal, mediation before. BUT, 100% of our clients have participated in some form of informal mediation at one point or another in their lives!! Don’t believe me?

Ever had a dispute with your spouse or family member and you needed to call in a close friend to chat with the parties and help solve the problem? That’s mediation. When your Uncle Larry is talking to your Uncle Ned, did you need to call in Grandma to help cooler heads prevail? That’s mediation too!

Mediation is a form of dispute resolution. The nature of the dispute doesn’t matter. If there’s conflict; mediation can help resolve that conflict. Just because the dispute resolution technique isn’t labelled as a mediation, doesn’t mean it’s not.

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Personal Injury lawyers across North America widely advertise that they provide “free consultations“. It’s a widely accepted industry standard. I don’t know any reputable personal injury law firms who don’t provide a free consultation, or free consultations thereafter. You may be hard pressed to find another area of the law where face to face consultations are provided for free. A lawyer’s commodity is their time. Lawyers don’t have any dry goods to sell you like bagels, I-Phones or shoes. All lawyers have is their time, and the work product from that time which generally manifests in the form of thoughtful and meticulously prepared letters, pleadings and other documents which clients have requested or need for their respective cases.

So, when a lawyer provides you with a free consultation, it’s important for that consultation not to be a waste of time. How can we make these consultations as productive as possible for everyone involved.

Generally, the lawyer will already have done his/her research on you, the client, BEFORE you step foot through the door. A quick Google Search, or search on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter can tell us volumes. If the accident was a high profile accident that was covered on TV or in newspapers, then a quick internet search can give us a good starting point in terms of how the accident, where, and when the accident took place. It can also give the lawyer a starting point on the nature of the injuries, if these were reported accurately. Certainly, the client’s version of events will be more important than what’s been reported in the media as it’s not often accurate. But, it does give the lawyer a starting point.

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When I first began practicing personal injury law, I quickly noticed how COMPLICATED Ontario’s regime of car accident law was. This was completely unnecessary.  Our government has made things so complicated, that lawyers need to focus on in car accident law in order to get results.

Car accident law should not be rocket science. In its purest sense, an innocent accident victim is seriously injured by another party who made a mistake or driving error. Rarely is there deliberate intent on the at fault party to cause a serious accident (save for drunk driving cases). There is no requirement for the parties involved to be sophisticated, knowledgeable of the law or wealthy. The at fault party should be responsible to compensate the injured party for the losses and pain and suffering. This sounds easy enough.

At Goldfinger Injury Lawyers, we have always engaged in making the law easy to understand for our clients. We want to break things down, so that people understand how things work, and how their case works.

This task has been made exponentially more difficult since April 1, 2016. The Ontario Government has moved all accident benefit disputes to a new Tribunal. New rules. New forms. More forms. More expensive to start the process for the injured. NO ACCESS TO THE COURT.

It used to be when you had a problem getting paid accident benefits, that you were able to apply for a FREE MEDIATION to the Financial Service Commission of Ontario (FSCO). FSCO was a Ontario Government body responsible for hearing all sort of accident benefit disputes between insurers and injured accident victims. There was a rich body of case law and detailed rules of procedure which had evolved. Insurers, paralegals, lawyers and even some members of the public knew how the system worked. There was familiarity. It was tailored specifically for accident benefit claims. And if matters didn’t pan out of FSCO, it was within the claimant’s power to keep pursuing the claim via Arbitration at FSCO, or leave FSCO entirely and sue instead before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. There was a level of flexibility and control there which allowed the claimant to control the process to some extent. There were also many opportunities for settlement along the way.

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Dear Ontario Drivers:

I am writing to update you on recent legislative changes that affect your car accident claim; in particular your Accident Benefits claims with your own insurer. There are two sides to any car accident lawsuit; the Accident Benefits file with your own auto insurer, and the main action against the driver who caused the accident. The Accident Benefits file is meant to provide money up front to cover things like income replacement (in part) and treatment expenses. It is important to get everything you can from the Accident Benefits side of the law suit so that you can maximize your recovery and reduce the losses from the car accident. The changes to the law are on the Accident Benefits side.

As you may know, when your insurer refuses to pay for a benefit, you have the right to apply to the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO). The process starts off with a Mediation teleconference where we try to convince the insurer to pay. If that fails, we proceed to the next step, being the Arbitration, where an Arbitrator makes an official ruling as to your entitlement, or lack thereof, to the benefit in dispute. The insurance company has to pay a $3,000.00 fee towards the Arbitration – we only pay $100. The Arbitrators who decide on the issues are known to be quite fair and whenever there is an ambiguity in the law, they tend to interpret the rules in favor of the injured party. Furthermore, the Arbitrators’ decisions are binding on one another, so if an Arbitrator makes a general ruling about an issue, the insurance companies tend to accept it easier knowing that another Arbitrator will likely make the same ruling. For the above reasons, the FSCO process is an acceptable form of dispute resolution although it is far from perfect and there are often long delays before you get a decision.  Continue reading →

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This morning, I saw some of the most gruesome video tape of an assault I have ever seen in my years as a personal injury lawyer. The video depicted a horrific assault of one man, pummelling a defenceless man who had been knocked unconscious from a series of punches to the head.  Even though the man being beaten lay motionless on the ground, he was still being punched repeatedly in the face. Unlike a Mixed Martial Arts fight, there was no referee to stop to beating. It continued for what seemed to be an eternity. This was rated “R” footage that would have made anyone cringe. Even a personal injury lawyer such as myself who has seen some pretty nasty images over the years.

As a result of the serious beating, the injured party sustained a fractured orbital bone, along with brain damage. This does not take in to consideration the bruising cuts to the victims face. He had to be rushed to hospital in Toronto following the attack, where he remained for 3 days following his discharge home.

In years past, this assault would have been described by the victim or any witnesses in words; based on foggy memory. Those memories get even foggier as time passes. If the victim or the witnesses had consumed alcohol or drugs at the time of the attack, then chances are those memories are even foggier.

Around 10 years ago, when injured parties and witnesses were asked to provide their best recollection of the events giving rise to the claim, all they had to go was based on these foggy memories, notes, or perhaps photos taken at the scene.

But all of that has changed over the past decade. Cameras have gotten smaller and smaller; and those cameras now have video capabilities. Every cell phone on the market today, with a few exceptions, have both photo capability and video capability. And there are now more cell phones on the planet than people. Cameras are so small today, and can be connected to almost any computer device, they can fit on any surface; from a dashboard cam on a car; to the back of a pen/pencil.

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This will be a fun edition of the Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer Blog. First, we would like to congratulate our founder and directing lawyer, Brian Goldfinger, on his recent naming to the Legal Elite for 2016 by London Business Magazine. The Legal Elite recognizes the brightest and best legal minds in London, ON and Southwest Ontario. This is Brian’s second consecutive year being named to the Legal Elite. We are glad to see all of Brian’s hard work representing injured accident victims and disability claimants getting some fantastic positive recognition in the community. None of this could be accomplished without the hard work from the team of hard working lawyers, law clerks, rehabilitation professionals and support staff at Goldfinger Injury Lawyers which have helped Brian fight on behalf of his clients. A big thank you to everyone behind the scenes for making this award possible.

Here is a link to the feature article on Brian Goldfinger being named to the 2016 Legal Elite by London Business Magazine.

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Goldfinger Injury Lawyers has four offices. Our first office opened in Toronto. This was followed by our second office in Peterborough. Our lawyers have long driven up and down a beautiful stretch of highway known has Highway #115. This is an Ontario Provincial Highway that connects Peterborough to Toronto by Highway 401. Highway 115 begins near Newcastle, and then proceeds north and ends at Highway 7 in Peterborough.

In the summer months, many cottage goers in the Kawarthas zoom along picturesque Highway 115 driving by quaint farmer’s markets, ice cream stands, kitschy motels, burger stands; sprinkled in with a few Tim Horton’s type of restaurants. It’s a beautiful drive in the summer.

It’s also a glorious drive in the fall with the changing of the autumn leaves.

The winter is when this drive can get dangerous. Not unlike many smaller highways in Ontario, Highway 115 isn’t particularly wide. It has two lanes for northbound traffic, and two lanes for southbound traffic.  The highway isn’t particularly well lit. There are no lights in most sections of the highway which can create visibility problems. Highway 115 is straight for the most part, so drivers may have a tendency to be aggressive on the gas. Or, they may not even realize how fast they are travelling.

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