Several recent trends in personal injury litigation could potentially shake up the industry. Among them are the availability of insurance covering opposing parties’ legal costs, a tendency for more personal injury lawsuits to be filed well before the expiry of the limitation period and a tendency for insurers to go to trial rather than settle in cases where they believe a claim for pain and suffering will not meet the verbal threshold or exceed the statutory deductible specified in Ontario auto insurance law.
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Tort defendants responsible for accident benefit arbitration costs
Access to justice is being denied for injured Ontario motorists as a result of the mandated use of the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT) as the exclusive means to resolve all accident benefit disputes given that the LAT does not allow a claimant to recover any dispute costs. But, thankfully, the courts have found a back-door way to award arbitration costs to injured motorists as part of tort cost awards.
Does Law School Make People Into Jerks?
Enough about my law school going down the chute. I’m tired of writing about it, and I’m sure you are tired reading about it. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet so the story isn’t over, but it’s time to move on to other things. Suffice it to say that there are very cranky Whittier alumni and current students who justifiably have their hair on fire.
http://abovethelaw.com/2017/05
No Proof that Pre-existing conditions worsened by accident – LAT 16-001985/AABS
The applicant was involved in an car accident on October 20, 2014 and sought benefits pursuant to the Schedule. He applied for NEBs and funding for examinations and treatment, including a chronic pain program and psychological counselling. Aviva paid non-earner benefits for 13 weeks, but on the basis of IEs later took the position that the applicant did not meet the test for non-earner benefits, and ended the benefit.
I don’t use fentanyl to get high. It lets me live without chronic pain
Imagine my surprise, on reading the news last spring, to find that I’d contributed to the spike in fentanyl street deaths in Vancouver.
Me? A writer leading a quiet life far across the country, in Halifax? My only connection to the “opioid epidemic” – a story that still dominates the news a whole year later – is fentanyl. I’ve used it for the past 12 years under the care of a pain specialist with 35 years of expertise treating serious, intractable pain, because, at 39, I suffered a rare-ish form of inflammatory arthritis so painful it eventually kept me from walking, standing, sitting and sleeping.
Bad hospital discharges among top complaints, Ontario watchdog finds
Complaints about inappropriate or poorly planned discharges from Ontario hospitals are among the top areas of concern the province’s new patient Ombudsman is monitoring, according to preliminary figures her office compiled for The Globe and Mail.
Stripping Rural Health Services Is Overloading Ontario’s Urban Hospitals
In my previous blog I wrote about the dangerous decline of small hospitals in Ontario’s rural communities. Services like surgery and obstetrics are being packed up and moved wholesale to urban centres, forcing rural patients to travel long distances to access care. You might think that urban hospitals are the winners in this equation. After all, when they “merge” with a smaller hospital they get to help themselves to an entire department’s worth of equipment, staff and patients. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Urban hospitals are also losers in the redistribution of health care, as are urban patients.
Bankrupt by cancer
The issue: Cancer patients can face crippling financial hardship, forcing some into bankruptcy. Solutions: All provinces should cover the cost of expensive out-of-hospital cancer drugs; government benefit programs should better respond to cancer patients’ needs.
Ontario Needs To Raise Welfare And Disability Benefits To A Living Wage
Ontario is embarking on a guaranteed basic income pilot program and while I agree with the concept, I have reservations. I think it is nothing but a crass attempt to demonstrate how progressive the Liberal party is at a time when their standing is a dismal third in the polls. Before they do anything, they should bring welfare and disability rates back to where they were when the right-wing Harris government slashed them in 1995.
LSUC Responds to Criticisms of Referral Fee Practices
Recent news articles that featured the referral fee practices of a select few personal injury legal firms have cast a negative light on personal injury lawyers specifically, but on lawyers as a whole. In response to the widespread criticisms made in the press, by the government, and the public of these few large corporations the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) has undertaken a careful review of the situation, and in my opinion they have reacted in a fair and measured way.
https://www.deutschmannlaw.com