Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog
TORONTO STAR PUBLISHED WED AUG 17, 2011
St. Mike’s denies sex assault in $2 million lawsuit Published On Wed Aug 17 2011Email Print Rss Article
Alyshah Hasham Staff Reporter
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Supermarkets and Department Stores..Your biggest personal injury nightmare?
First and foremost, I was shocked to learn that there are so many closet Goldfinger Injury Lawyers Blog fans out there?!?!?! Apparently, there are lots of you. This is kinda like me telling you; the reader; that “I’m big in Japan“; but apparently I AM! I’m to weird law seeking people what David Hasselhoff is to Germans; an obscure Uber Shtar. Even my near and dear cousin Sharky in Malibu is a fan of the blog. He’s a Hollywood writer, so he knows good writing when he sees it. Next stop, Düsseldorf. Can you believe I managed to dot the “u” on Düsseldorf?
With my new found celebrity, has come large responsibility. An obligation to my adoring public. People want to know WHERE they should be most careful in order to avoid accident; so they don’t become Goldfinger Injury Lawyers’s newest client.
What do you want me to tell you? Seriously? You should drive your car in full body armour because there are so many bad drivers on the road? You should walk your weiner dog Buttons while wearing a helmet because you never know when one can slip and fall on an uneven sidewalk? You should pad the walls of your condo like an insane asylum to avoid traumatic injury? You should never leave your house except in the event your house spontaneously bursts to flames? The answer to all of these questions is of course, YES.
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How to become a Judge in Ontario
Many people ask me: Brian, when are you going to become a Judge, and if you become a Judge, please tell me how do you go about it? Is there a big election to become a judge like in the United States? Do you have to be super smart like your brother-in-law Ben Hackett? Do you have to be super good looking like your friend Rick?
Great questions. All of them.
First, I have no intention of becoming a Judge. The Honourable Justice Goldfinger might have a great ring to it; but isn’t my cup of tea. My position may change over the years, but for now, I’m plenty happy representing Ontario’s accident victims and fighting the good fight against insurance companies who do wrong. My good friend and colleague, Bryan Fromstein on the other hand….now there’s a candidate!
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Did I just kill 10,000 trees in casting my vote? My not green voting experience
I voted. I did. Seriously. I didn’t think I’d vote because every time I listen to ANY party leader, it’s like they’re pissing on me and calling it rain.
As some of you may know, I now call London my primary residence. I live in the riding of London North Centre. All you Western kids will associate this riding as the one with Masonville Mall in it.
Here was my dilemma. I wanted to vote, but I wouldn’t be in London come election day. What to do? (I missed the advance polls for all of you smart alecs out there).
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But I was going to make a million $$$: Quantifying your loss of income claim in a personal injury case
Client after client after client tell me that their personal injury case is worth MILLIONS…No wait…BILLIONS of dollars. The reality is that some cases are worth millions, other cases… well….just aren’t.
The real money in personal injury cases is NOT for pain and suffering. Pain and suffering damages are CAPPED in Canada. You read that right. Pain and suffering damages are CAPPED in Canada. That cap sits at around $310,000-$325,000 or so; depending on inflation and who you ask.
The real money for personal injury cases is in future care costs and loss of income or loss of future earning capacity. This blog entry will examine what it takes to establish a past and future income loss claim.
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Top 5 Winter Accident Questions posed by clients at Goldfinger Personal Injury Law
As you may know, Goldfinger Injury Lawyers recently expanded our territory, by opening a new office in London, ON. We are located in the heart of downtown London, at 341 Talbot Street, right next to the John Labatt Centre (Go Knights!) and the Farmer’s Market. If you’re ever in town, come by and check out our London office. Some say it’s nicer than our Toronto office, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. By opening our London office, we hope to better serve our clients in Southwestern Ontario. We’ve seen lots of new clients from London, Saint Thomas, Rodney, Bleheim, Oxford, Embro, Thurold, Arva, Drumbo, Blenheim, Chatham, Woodstock, Thames Centre, Ingersoll, Kintore, Thorndale and Tillsonburg. We are proud to serve these under-represented communities and provide these individuals with access to Ontario’s courts and access to justice.
What can I tell you about about practicing in Southwestern Ontario? It snows snows snows out here. And with snow comes slush, ice, poor road conditions and poor visibility. With poor road conditions and poor visibility comes more accidents.
Here are some of the top 5 questions/scenarios we’ve seen or been asked this winter:
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Long Term Disability Benefits & Claims: Your Roadmap
Our office gets a number of calls every week from people wanting to know if they qualify for Long Term Disability (“LTD”) benefits; how they can make a claim; or just how their LTD policy works.
This article in intended to give you a bit of help in better understanding the complicated world of Long Term Disability Benefits.
- LONG TERM DISABILITY BENEFITS: WHAT ARE THEY?
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Brian Goldfinger Quoted in Law Times about Court penalizing insurer $40K for failure to mediate in car accident case
In the case of Keam v. Caddey, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered that the insurance company pay to the Plaintiff $40,000 in ADDITION to damages for pain and suffering because the insurance company REFUSED to participate in the mediation process before the case went to trial. The Insurance Act REQUIRES that parties in a car accident case MEDIATE the disputes before it goes to trial. Our legistlature has also called for Mandatory Mediation in certain provincial jursidictions, like Toronto. The Ontario Court of Appeal found that the insurance company’s hard ball tactic of REFUSING to MEDIATE warranted a $40,000 penalty against the insurer.
The Honourable Justice Kathryn Feldman writing for the Ontario Court of Appeal stated “it is this approach that the legislature has disavowed by making mediation mandatory.”
My comments about this decision were quoted in the recent edition of the Law Times Journal. The link to the article is:
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Changes to Car Insurance Effective September 1, 2010
When you think about car insurance, it probably makes you gag or fall asleep Seriously! Who wants to hear about things like deductibles, benefits, premiums or the Insurance Act. It’s all a bore.
Our government has made Ontario’s Car Insurance so dense, so thick, and so complicated that changes to the Insurance Act aren’t even made within the Insurance Act anymore. Instead, they’re made into separate “Schedules” which are completely different Acts in and of themselves Genious!
These “Schedules” are called the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule or SABS for short. There are SABS for accidents on or after January 1, 1994. There are separate SABS for accidents on or after November 1996. There are separate SABS for accidents on or after December 2002. There are separate SABS for accidents on or after September 2010. Get the picture? Now who on earth has the time or the patience to go over this, know where to find the updated SABS or even understands what the SABS are trying to talk about. I can tell you this. They aren’t in plain to understand English that’s for sure. Try taking them to your local MPP and ask for their help in interpreting them. They’ll be as dumbfounded as you. But it’s the MPPs and our government who are the architects of the SABS…go figure…
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Car Accident Income Benefits in Ontario at a Glance
Ontario has a very complicated accident benefits system for car accidents. Car accident lawyers have to keep up with the changes in the laws, which occur regularly.
If you or a loved one has been hurt or injured in a car accident, you are allowed to claim accident benefits. For some, the most important group of accident benefits are those relating to income, caregiver and non-earner benefits. All of these benefits represent money which is potentially available to you in the event that you are not able to lead a normal life as a result of your car accident.
The thing that insurance companies DO NOT tell you, is that you have the right to chose which benefits you would like. This is called an “election”, and there is a special form that you must complete in order to elect one of these three benefits. If you DO NOT elect one of these three benefits, then the insurance company will pick a benefit for you; and it will likely be a benefit which is advantageous for them, and not for you.
