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More often than would think, insurance companies seek to add terms to a Full and Final Release which they would not otherwise be able to get in Court.

A Full and Final Release is a legal document which gets signed when a case gets settled outside of Court.

This is standard. Anyone who settles their case outside of Court in a personal injury or long term disability action will be asked by a Defendant to sign such a Release.

Generally, the Release will contain provisions detailing the amount of the settlement, terms that the settlement is final and binding on both parties, that the Defendant is prepared to pay the settlement amount, but does not admit liability, that the Plaintiff cannot sue again over this specific cause of action and that should s/he do so, that the Release will be relied upon to dismiss the case with costs; and that the terms of the settlement are confidential, but can be disclosed to lawyers, accountants and financial planners.

These terms are expected to be contained in a Release by plaintiff side personal injury lawyers. But sometimes (more often than you would expect) sophisticated insurers and their insureds try to get terms into the Release which fall well outside of the scope of the litigation. The Defendant is trying to get through the backdoor, what they cannot get through the front door.

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The law, above all else, ought to be transparent.

It should NOT be a secret society whereby only industry insiders have knowledge, power and insight that the general public does not have.

When a personal injury case goes to trial, the jury should be informed of how things work, so that they can make a fair and just decision. The jury should never be kept in the dark about how the law works, so that they can make an informed decision which will invariably impact the lives of the parties to the litigation.

Yet, the practice of personal injury law in Ontario has many secrets. You would think that it’s neither nice, nor fair to have secrets which are withheld from a jury during the course of a personal injury trial.

Yet there are secrets which personal injury lawyers and judges cannot share with the Jury until only after the Jury has made up their mind.

What are these secrets you ask? Let me share them with you.

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I’ve done some radio in the past.

I’ve done some television spots as well.

But what I’ve enjoyed the most are podcast appearances.

Don’t get me wrong. Radio and television are a lot of fun. They’ve both excellent mediums to educate and give updates on my chosen field; the practice of Plaintiff side personal injury law in Ontario.

It’s amazing how many people, know so little about such an important area of the law. Lots of people have cars. All motorists need to pay for car insurance. Car insurance is basically a legal contract.

The same applies to home owners and home owner insurance. It also applies to renters and rental insurance.

How about Ontario Disability Support, Unemployment Insurance (Disability/Sickness) or Canada Pension Plan-Disability. All of these relate to injuries or disabilities, and in turn, to personal injury law.

What about injured employees who need to take time off of work due to an injury, illness or stress leave. These people try to claim disability benefits from their employer and get denied. This is yet another branch of personal injury and disability law.

What I’m trying to say is that know a few basics about personal injury law isn’t such a bad thing for people to know. And by doing these media appearances, our office tries to educate the masses as best we can, in an easy to understand way.

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Winter time means slip and fall accidents on account of snow, ice, sleet a slush.

These slip and fall cases can cause serious injuries to innocent visitors to public (or private) spaces.

Think of a parking lot at a school, university, grocery store, or a shopping mall that isn’t properly plowed, sanded or salted. Or perhaps a local gas station that hasn’t been maintained after some serious winter weather.

After a Plaintiff slips, falls, get hurt; begins the rehab process; what happens next? What happens behind the scenes of such a case.

With years of dedicated assistance to serving innocent accident victims across Ontario, Goldfinger Injury Lawyers has seen countless of these cases. While no two cases are exactly alike; they do share a lot of commonalities. Each case is determined on its own set of facts. Many cases can be similar, but NOT the same.

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Cold weather!

Snow!

Ice!

Yikes!

Winter means that you are either really excited because you happen to be a winter sports enthusiast (most people who love the winter also ski, snowshoe, play hockey and can’t get enough of the cold weather) or you are dreading what’s yet to come.

Whether or not you like, or dislike the winter weather doesn’t matter. But what does matter is that you stay safe for when the sidewalks, walk ways, stairs and entrances get wet, slushy, icy and slippery.

Around this time of year, our lawyers see an increase in client calls relating to slip and fall cases dealing with icy or slippery surfaces.

There is a very good reason for this aside from the obvious that it’s cold, snowy and can be icy outside. The reality is that the first winter storm or frost can catch us off guard. We aren’t quite ready for it. All of our “snow stuff“, such as winter boots, winter coats, hats and gloves were all packed away at the end of last winter, and have yet to be unpacked for the upcoming cold weather season.

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We get a lot of questions and queries to the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog. Some serious. Some not so serious. In today’s edition of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog; Brian Goldfinger himself will answer those questions. Some serious answers. Others not so serious. So sit back, grab a nice hot cup of green tea and enjoy!

Question: Do snow tires actually work?

Answer: Yes they do! Not only that, but your car insurer will offer you a reduced premium if you can show proof that you have installed snow tires on to your vehicle. Keep in mind that personal injury lawyers love to hammer Defendants if they were involved in a winter weather collision and they didn’t have snow tires on their vehicle. They argue that the accident may have been prevented, or may have not been as serious had the vehicle been equipped with snow tires. A driver without snow tires will be frowned upon in the context of a personal injury case. So get them. And yes, they work!

Question: What’s the longest personal injury case you’ve ever been a part of; and why did it take so long?

Answer: 10 years and 2 months! The case took so long because the Plaintiff was a minor when the case began; and it took a while for the Plaintiff’s injuries to crystallize and plateau. It’s very difficult for a personal injury lawyer to recommend a settlement in year 3 of the case; if there’s a lot of uncertainty with respect to the Plaintiff’s health. Add the complication that the Plaintiff was young and growing and you have the recipe for a long drawn out case. This does not even take into consideration the complicating circumstances dealing with liability, causation or contributory negligence.

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Sometimes, during the course of a personal injury case, your lawyer will need to attend Court. But it’s neither for your trial, nor for pre-trial. It’s not even to set a date for trial, or to advise the Judge about the status of the case or readiness for trial.

The purpose of going to Court is because your personal injury lawyer will need something that only a Judge’s order can secure. Or, perhaps the Plaintiff lawyer and the Defendant lawyer cannot agree on how the case should move forward causing the case to be at a standstill. Whatever the reason for attending at Court, these interlocutory steps are just that. They are not the trial. They are intermediate steps which are common in personal injury cases. These interlocutory steps are called “motions”. You may hear a lawyer say that they “need to bring a motion“. This is exactly what they are referring to.

Civil motions Court across Ontario are backlogged. It’s nobody’s fault. This is just the reality of dealing with a chronically underfunded and over subscribed system. We have no statistics to support this statement, but we would guesstimate that the majority of civil motions relate to personal injury cases. The most common motions we see are motions for/relating to:

  • Motion for substituted service of Pleadings on a Defendant
  • Motion to Extend the time for service of the Statement of Claim (related to the motion for substituted service)
  • Motion to Amend the Pleadings
  • 30.10 Motion to compel a party to produce records (which they haven’t produced despite repeated requests)
  • Undertakings/Refusals Motion
  • Motion to Add/substitute a Party to the Statement of Claim, or to add a Statutory Defendant

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Sometimes lawyers are upfront and direct.

Other times, they can be sneaky. It’s those sneaky lawyers that you need to watch out for.

In all of my years of practice, I’ve seen some sneaky stuff. Lawyers and insurers trying to add terms to agreements which weren’t previously discussed, or negotiated. Lawyers and insurers seeking to get in through the back door, what they could not otherwise get in through the front door so to say.

Here are a few examples of those sneaky terms which you should watch out for in the context of your personal injury or long term disability case.

Resignation Clause

A Plaintiff is disabled and his/her claim for long term disability benefits gets denied. The Plaintiff then brings a claim for payment of his/her long term disability benefits. The litigation goes by over the years through the pleadings stage, discovery stage, and then to mediation. But over the years, the Plaintiff does not quit his/her job, get fired, or tender a formal resignation. The Plaintiff is still technically an employee of the company; albeit, and employee who is not working. It can certainly be argued that the employment is frustrated, but that’s an argument for the employer to make.

At mediation the insurer, as a term of settlement requires that the Plaintiff sign a formal resignation from his/her employment in order to get the long term disability settlement. The Plaintiff’s employment is not part of the litigation. If the long term disability case went to trial, the Judge would not be able to make any Order with respect to the employee resigning, or remaining an employee. The Plaintiff’s employment status is a completely separate matter.

Yet, the insurance defence lawyer is insisting that the Plaintiff in the long term disability action sign a formal resignation (without any consideration). The Plaintiff would be sacrificing any potential severance pay, access to other collateral benefits (medical, dental, life etc.) without receiving any consideration save for the long term disability benefits owed to him/her.

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As a personal injury lawyer, I would love to snap my “Goldfinger” and make all of my client’s dreams come true!

I would snap my “Goldfinger” and my client’s cases would settle for billions and trillions and gazillions of dollars!

I would snap my “Goldfinger” and my client’s cases would settle on demand; with no hassle or stress for my clients.

I would snap my “Goldfinger” and the Defendant insurer would pay for a ticker tape parade down Yonge Street in honour of the Plaintiff and the at fault driver would have to serve as the Plaintiff’s butler for a lifetime.

All of this would be very nice for my clients, but it’s fantasy. The actual practice of law doesn’t work at all this way.

Many clients want to see their cases open, and then close quickly for millions and millions of dollars. That’s the way which personal injury cases appear to work on the television and in movies; so why not in reality as well?

Because reality is completely different than the world we see on TV or on the big screen.

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