A key change to legislation, effective September 1st, 2010, dramatically impacts consumers. The new legislation makes it much harder for individuals to have appropriate medical rehabilitation coverage if they are injured in a motor vehicle collision. The cap or the limit for medical rehab services in a normal case has been dropped from $100,000 to $50, 000. It’s a dramatic decrease that affects every single person who has an insurance policy in the province of Ontario. The legislation has also eliminated entirely some of the other benefits that used to be included, for example, housekeeping and attendant care.

The changes apply to the accident benefit claim or the no fault benefit claim. This is the benefit that every person who’s involved in a car accident in the province of Ontario has to assist them in their recovery from those injuries. If you have a lawsuit against the other party, then you are entitled to claim, among other things, medical rehab expenses in excess of what you’re able to access through your own accident and benefits claim. Having said that, not everybody will have that type of a lawsuit or be able to sue because of the restrictive nature of those lawsuits in Ontario.

This change was automatic for every single insurance policy in Ontario upon renewal. So, as of last September 1st when your policy got renewed, it actually didn’t get renewed for the same coverages that you had before. You used to have $100,000 in coverage for medical rehab services. When the policy renewed, it automatically renewed at the lower level of $50,000, along with other changes that make it much more difficult for you to claim benefits.

Insurers were supposed to let people know about those changes, and all they did, in some cases, was send very convoluted letters, trying to explain those changes and show how they were beneficial to their clients. It’s not beneficial in any way to have less coverage. What they do provide is the option for you to buy more insurance to return your coverage to what you used to have before the automatic reduction. But again, unless you exercise that option, you will be left with this automatic renewal which puts you at the lower level of coverage. In very many cases, this is not going to be sufficient medical rehabilitation coverage to treat your injuries properly. Buying the optional insurance is actually quite inexpensive and people should do that, even just to keep their coverage the same as it was before September 2010.

If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

The minor injury regulations limit the compensation for pain and suffering caused by minor soft tissue injuries to $4000. That amount has been adjusted for inflation to currently just over $4500. These regulations were a significant departure from the old system, in which a person’s injuries would be assessed based on previous cases, and there was no cap specifically to the compensation for soft tissue injuries.
Two cases went through the court as test cases to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation and the new cap on the compensation for soft tissue injuries. These cases were heard at the Court of Queen’s Bench, which is the Alberta superior court. In February 2008, the court rendered a decision saying that the law was unconstitutional. This decision set aside the 2004 legislation, returned courts to the previous manner of assessing injury claims, and removed the cap.
In 2008, the Court of Appeal heard the appeal of this judgment and rendered their decision in June, 2009. The Court of Appeal overturned the trial judge’s decision, saying that the law wasn’t unconstitutional and therefore was valid. This gave the authority back to the legislation that imposed the cap on compensation.
In August, an application was filed with the Supreme Court of Canada, for leave to appeal.. It’s very difficult to get a case heard by the Supreme Court, and in order to do so, the court has to determine that the case is of national importance. Whether or not the Court will hear the appeal should be determined by December 2009.

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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the Calgary, Alberta Region, contact Calgary Personal Injury Lawyers.

When we become involved, we can do sub-searches of the property through the registry office and see who legally owns title to the property.In terms of a sidewalk or municipally owned parking lot, there’s a complicating factor. You not only have to determine who owns it, but there is a notice provision under the Municipal Act that is very short. You might have to provide written notice to the appropriate municipality of your potential claim against them as the result of a slip and fall that occurred on their sidewalks within 7 or 10 days. That time period is not necessarily exclusive to municipalities but it is the most common notice period for occupier’s liability matters. Seven or 10 days is not a very long time, but unfortunately, it’s the law under the Municipal Act. So, if you suffer a slip and fall on a sidewalk or if you think it’s on municipally owned property, you should be putting that municipality on notice as soon as possible and certainly seeing a lawyer within that time period. The purpose of the notice is to allow the municipality sufficient description so they can go out and investigate the matter and possibly rectify the matter as soon as possible. Typically, service of the notice of your intent to claim on the clerk of the municipality is sufficient. The notice itself also has to contain some very specific items that an experienced personal injury lawyer knows to include to ensure your claim is acceptable.
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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

The occupier would be the store that occupies that particular location. Generally speaking, commercial leases require the store to take whatever reasonable measures are necessary inside their premises to ensure the safety of the people who are coming into that store. In essence, the owner contracts out of that liability by putting the responsibility onto the occupier.
When a mall owner is responsible for the sidewalks surrounding the mall and the entranceways, they will often contract out to a property maintenance company the responsibility for removing the ice and snow when necessary. The Occupiers’ Liability Act recognizes the commercial reality of that situation and the Act further recognizes that in those circumstances it will be the property maintenance company that would be responsible, not the occupier or the owner. The Act recognizes that, because they took reasonable steps to contract out the snow removal duties, the owner or occupier can essentially escape liability. The liability will fall onto the party who was contractually responsible for those services. Because of this, you will see very often a lawsuit involving the owner or the occupier of the premises but also involving the property maintenance company. It is often the property maintenance company that is the real target defendant in those situations.

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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

One reason is because of the 7- and 10-day notice periods for registering an intent to claim. With such a short period of time available, it is important to get help right away to begin the legal process. Also, it is worthwhile to have a professional help find out who the actual defendants will be.
Most of the clients I see have experienced orthopedic injuries or broken bones. They’ve gone to the hospital and received medical attention. However, a portion of my slip and fall clients have suffered soft tissue injuries or soreness. This pain will worsen as the days go on and they delay getting medical treatment thinking it will get better.
It is never a good thing to delay getting medical treatment for two reasons. The first reason is that a delay in treatment can have a negative effect on your recovery. The second reason is that the first evidence of an injury due to a slip and fall is the doctor’s first medical note. If this note is written 3, 4, or 5 days after the slip and fall, the property owner could ask, “ “How do we know that it actually happened the way you said it did because you didn’t go see a doctor for three or four days?” It’s important to see a lawyer and to also get medical attention as soon as you are able after the event.
Another important thing you must do is report the accident, in writing, to whomever you think is the occupier of owner of the property. That way you’ve got a paper trail to establish when the incident occurred or what happened. In fact, you might even be able to speak to the owner or the occupier and that might also be very helpful. That oftentimes does happen for slips and falls in malls or in stores. Somebody from the mall will come and fill in a form asking you certain questions about how the fall occurred and how you feel. That written notice beneficial to you because then there’s no question about where the slip and fall occurred, what date it occurred, and even the time of day that it occurred.
Lately, I have had clients who have taken photographs of the scene of their slip and fall with their phone cameras. These photos are not always the best quality, but some are good enough to actually show the hazard or the problem that caused the fall. A photograph won’t necessarily create negligence but it does prevent the owner and occupier denying that there was snow and ice, for instance, on the sidewalk at the time of the fall. Since they’re always producing new phones with better cameras, I expect to see even more of this use in the future.

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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

For example, if a person falls over a railing on someone’s porch, we need to determine if the railing was high enough and if it met the building code. We would have an engineer attend at the premises to determine whether or not the railing indeed violated the building code or was not a reasonably safe railing.
Another commonly used expert would be an expert in slip coefficients. This expert measures the slipperiness of different items or different surfaces. For example, if you slip on a recently waxed floor in a mall, it could be that that wax polish is too slippery and so it’s not reasonably safe for people to walk on. A slip coefficient expert will measure the slipperiness of that surface to determine its level of safety. Experts can be extremely helpful in demonstrating whether or not there’s liability in any particular case.
In a slip and fall case, I tell my clients to keep their shoes and to stop wearing them because they are now evidence. It’s important that they not degrade the sole any further because the expert may well bring that shoe to court because he’s examined it. He might also bring the substance that was used on the floor that made it too slippery. Generally, however, the experts go out, do an examination of the scene and then write a report. They bring the report to court along with their data when they testify.
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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

The occupier’s duty is to take such care, in all the circumstances that are reasonable, to ensure the reasonable safety for those people entering onto the premises. It is important to note that the standard the occupier needs to achieve is one of “reasonableness,” not a standard of perfection.
What is reasonable is very dependent upon circumstances, which is why every case is decided upon its own unique set of facts. For example if there is a blizzard, it’s not reasonable for the occupier or the owner of the property to be out there shoveling the snow away every five minutes. However, if the blizzard comes to an end and the snow and ice from the blizzard are left on the travel portion of the sidewalk for two or three days before it’s removed, then that’s very likely to be considered unreasonable. Of course other factors are involved such as the amount of snow or how well traveled the sidewalk is. However, in the end, the occupier has a duty to remove the snow within a reasonable time frame and in a reasonable manner.
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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

The court is entitled to split or apportion liability between two or more parties that might have some responsibility, so one could be the owner of the property or the occupier of the property. Another could be the property maintenance company, and, the third could be yourself, the injured party, if you did something which the court deemed was a contributing factor to your injury.
An example might be someone who slipped and fell on some ice but was wearing inappropriate footwear. It’s well known that in Canadian winters you can expect that there will be some ice and some snow on municipal sidewalks or even private driveways. If you were wearing dress shoes rather than well-soled winter boots, then the likelihood is that a judge or jury may well feel that you have contributed to your own injury to some extent. It does, however, need to be shown that the sole of the shoe was slipperier than the sole of a winter boot. A similar principle would apply to a car accident in which you were not wearing your seatbelt. Generally speaking, there would be an assumption that, to some extent, you contributed to your injuries suffered in that car accident.
Each case is different but, even if there is an element of contributory negligence, that doesn’t mean it’s a case not worth pursuing. It just means that there is some portion of the claim that will be assigned to you. If the claim is worth a $100,000, but there’s 20% contributory negligence, you would only recover $80,000 on that case. Certainly, even with these factors present, there are an awful lot of cases still worth pursuing because they have value.

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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the London, Ontario Region, contact Lomax Law Firm.

They need to be very careful that they don’t overdo it and push themselves too hard. The one time they decide to try mowing the lawn or carry a few groceries or instinctively pick up their child is the one time they’re going to be caught and nothing destroys a case faster than that.
Surveillance is the norm; the insurance company would rather spend money on surveillance than pay somebody $25,000 in benefits. Sometimes the people doing the surveillance are employees of the insurance company and sometimes they are independent. I would say that in all severe cases, and in perhaps 70% of medium cases, the insurance companies use video surveillance.
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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the Brampton, Ontario Region, contact Folkes Legal Professional Corporation.

The doctor must also have expertise in the specific injury in order to certify.
The Court of Appeals has dealt with a number of these cases in which the insurance company did not want to pay on a claim because it was not issued within 2 years of the accident causing the injury. Now, in Ontario, the person has 2 years to make their claim from the time that they are aware that they aren’t going to get any better and have had a doctor certify that their injuries are severe, permanent, and disabling.
Claims for general damages are also capped in Canada. At present, the maximum award is a lump sum of around $350,000 for the most severe disability and suffering.

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If you, or someone you care about, is dealing with Personal injury law issues in the Brampton, Ontario Region, contact Folkes Legal Professional Corporation.