Legal Blog
Letter from the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association to Provincial Candidates
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
In light of the recent Provincial elections in Ontario the President of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, Richard Halpern has sent a message to the candidates.
The letter is a summary of the history of the current regime in place for those injured in motor vehicle accidents.
Also, the letter urges reform to the harsh legislative limitations with respect to auto insurance. I think the message sent by Mr. Halpern is excellent and compassionate and I hope whoever is elected will give serious thought and debate to the issues raised by him.
It is important that we become active in the electoral process by participating at local party events with prospective candidates and question and recommend improvements and concerns about the auto insurance industry.
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Class Action Lawsuit
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Josephine Mackie Grey, a widowed mother of four has lived in public housing for 22 years. Grey has initiated a class action law suit against the City of Toronto and possibly the Province.
Grey alleges she has had to wait over 17 years to have repairs completed at her public housing unit. Grey told the Toronto Star, that after years of dealing with floods, overflowing toilets, no shower and not counting on heat, she had enough.
She wants the court to Order the Toronto Community Housing Corp, who is responsible for managing 58,500 public housing units to maintain the units and ensure they comply with basic health and safety standards within six months and to pay damages in the amount of $1,000 to every tenant who has filed a request for repairs and has waited two weeks or more.
This will be an interesting case to watch as some of Toronto's public housing units are completely dilapidated and wore down while, others seem to be in better shape.
I was not wearing my seatbelt- do I still have a claim?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
In a decision rendered on September 27, 2005, in Snushall v. Fulsang, the Court of Appeal capped the seatbelt defence at 25%.
In this case, the Plaintiff, Ms. Snushall, was a passenger in a vehicle that rear-ended another vehicle. At the time of the accident, the Plaintiff was not wearing a seatbelt.
The Court of Appeal held that, where contributory negligence is found on the basis of a seatbelt defence, its award should fall within a range of 0% to 25%. In a judgement delivered for the court, Juriansz J.A. noted that the upper limit of the range, that is 25%, is available only in those cases where the jury is satisfied that substantially all the damages could have been prevented by wearing a seatbelt ; and that, where the evidence does not establish that all the injuries would have been effectively prevented, the allocation should be less.
The rational for this decision rendered by the Court was that a Plaintiff is injured by physical forces resulting from abrupt changes in the momentum of the vehicle during the accident. The Defendant's negligence may be said to be the "cause" of the injuries because it initiates the sequence of events that lead to the accident and the physical forces that inflict the injuries. But for the Defendant's negligence, the accident would not have taken place.
The Court further noted that a defendant whose negligence results in the accident has breached the general tort duty to take care to avoid endangering others, whereas by not wearing a seatbelt a person does not commit a tort but fails to protect himself or herself from the tort of others.
In essence what this means for the injured party, is that they cannot be held to be more than 25% responsible for their injuries. As such, any claim for General damages can be reduced to a maximum of 25%, and only if a jury is satisfied that all of their injuries could have been prevented with the use of a seat belt. This is rarely the case.