Personal Injury Law and Claims

INTRODUCTION to Personal Injury Law in Ontario

If you have been injured in Ontario there are time limitations to make a claim. To ensure your rights you should contact us for a free consultation regarding your claim.

Our civil litigation practice handles:

We provide legal representation to those who have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other entity. We are especially knowledgeable and have more experience with regard to the area of law known as tort law, which includes civil wrongs and economic or non-economic damages to a person’s property, reputation, or rights.

We handle cases that fall under tort law (civil litigation) including, but not limited to: work injuries, automobile and other accidents, defective products, medical mistakes, slip and fall accidents, and more.

Disability Insurer Must Honour Its Commitment

My client was an enterprising young woman who had successfully run her own business when she was taken ill with a chronic and debilitating syndrome. She could not work and was forced to go on disability. The insurer provided her with monthly disability payments for a few years until they decided that she was well enough to go back to work. My client and her doctors disputed this but the insurer immediately stopped all payments to her and we took them to court to get them back. Without the disability payments it was going to be difficult for my client to survive the years it would take for this lawsuit to come to trial.

The typical pattern prior to this case had been for disability insurers not to be ordered to make any interim payments to an insured where they disputed the entitlement. The obligation to pay was something that was traditionally left to be decided at trial. Of course that put a lot of pressure on the disabled person to settle for a smaller amount than they were necessarily entitled to in order to receive some funds.

In this case the Court was asked to order the insurer to make interim payments to my client until the trial was reached. The Court agreed and the insurer was required to reinstate the payments that they had previously suspended. As the Judge said A: The Insured's vulnerability and reliance on the Insurer makes the Insurer subject to a duty of utmost good faith to the Insured in assessing and settling the claim. The insurer had previously accepted her claim and they should not be free to unilaterally stop it.

Not long after the insurer settled with my client on terms that were acceptable to her.

Non-swimmer Drowns, Family Recovers

My client was a widow with three young children whose husband had died by drowning at a public beach. The man was a non-swimmer who thought he was in a safe and shallow part of the roped-in area. He was wrong. The rope had been placed too close to a precipitous drop and he soon found himself over his head.

The Municipality resisted the lawsuit by arguing that the rope was placed where they had always placed it and that was a safe and secure area. Besides, they argued, they had an independent witness who claimed that the non-swimmer had gone outside the safety zone.

The problem was, no one had talked to the independent witness to ask him about whether he was aware of there being a steep decline next to the roped-in area. When he was finally asked, he said sure there was a steep drop, it had been there for years. The allegation that the deceased had gone outside the safety zone disappeared once it was clear how dangerous the area was for a non-swimmer. The insurance company quickly settled for just under 1 million dollars.

For a free consultation regarding your legal matters contact us today.