When you hear about some of the successful lawsuits in the U.S. where it seems like plaintiffs make off with millions from particularly stubborn hangnails or an eyelash that they just couldn’t get out of their eye, you might assume that we have the right to be equally litigious here in Canada. Fortunately for our legal system, we have regulations to manage whether an injured party can file a tort lawsuit. Serious injury attorneys know about these regulations, and they can help you to secure everything that you’re owed by law, especially if insurance isn’t enough.
The Right to Sue after a Car Accident
Because of Ontario’s no-fault insurance system, injured parties are not guaranteed to be entitled to sue for the entirety of their injury. The no-fault system assumes that insurance benefits cover you financially, so you can only sue in certain situations. If you’ve been injured in a motor vehicle accident, Ontario’s Insurance Act specifies under what conditions you are allowed to sue. We’ve put together a brief outline of those conditions and scenarios. However, if you believe that your insurance policy coverage is not enough on its own, and you want to sue, this article will give you an outline only —it is strongly recommended that you contact serious injury attorneys to learn about all of your options.
Economic Loss
Economic losses, also known as pecuniary losses in the legal documentation, carry only mild restrictions as far as lawsuits are concerned. Regardless of the severity of your car accident injury, you are entitled to sue if you have experienced a loss of income or loss of earning capacity as a result of your post-accident disability. The only restrictions proffered by the Insurance Act are that you may not claim any loss of income damages within seven days of the accident, and you are only allowed to claim 70 per cent of net income loss or net loss of earning capacity.
Pain and Suffering
As serious injury attorneys know, this is where the Insurance Act becomes stricter. Under the Act, you are expressly forbidden from filing a tort lawsuit for pain and suffering unless your injuries meet what is known as the verbal threshold.
- The verbal threshold is a legal definition for serious injuries. Injuries meet the verbal threshold if they cause: death, permanent serious disfigurement, or permanent serious impairment of an important physical, mental, or physiological process.
Keep in mind also that if your injuries meet the verbal threshold and you file a suit for pain and suffering, each person in the suit is subject to an insurance deductible. Of course, paying that deductible would likely be straightforward should you win your lawsuit.
Serious injury attorneys will be the first to tell you that this is a complicated process. The Insurance Act is a long, detailed document, and it takes an experienced Toronto personal injury lawyer to work through it in the case of a severe car accident. Regardless of the complexities, though, you're entitled to damages after being injured in an auto accident, so schedule your free personal injury consultation with a Sokoloff lawyer as soon as possible.
Source:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/laws/stat/rso-1990-c-i8/latest/#sec267.5subsec1_smooth
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/960461