15 Jan ICBC Is Deliberately Running Up Court Costs And Clogging An Already Burdened Court System With Unnecessary Trials

Posted at 12:26h in News by Heather Sweeney

In early January, 2019, ICBC announced a policy that will force thousands of British Columbians to unnecessarily to go to court to obtain fair compensation for their injuries, lost wages and medical expenses.

Prior to this announcement, approximately 98% of ICBC personal injury claims settled out of court. In almost all cases there is a range of fair compensation established in accordance with set legal principles. For example, an injury with ongoing pain, employment-related disability and future medical expenses may be worth between $200,000 and $300,000. Since most people want to avoid going to court and ICBC has unlimited legal resources, such cases typically settle prior to trial in the $150,000 to $225,00 range.  In other words, most people are prepared to accept less money to avoid having to go to court. Now ICBC has announced a province-wide policy of offering injured victims only a very small percentage of what fair compensation should be. Staying with the example above, ICBC is now offering compensation in the $50,000 to $75,000 range for a case worth between $200,000 and $300,000.

Concurrent with the announcement of this new policy, ICBC abruptly withdrew all previous offers to settle and substituted dramatically lower offers. ICBC is now telling injured victims that if you want to be compensated fairly, you must run the risk and endure the ordeal of a Supreme Court trial. There are no exceptions to this new policy and it applies throughout British Columbia.

Even though ICBC claims that litigation expenses are “out of control”, it has just given its own lawyers a raise, ranging from 30% to 50%. In addition to increasing lawyers’ salaries, ICBC will now pay for two ICBC lawyers to go to trial instead of one.

If ICBC is really worried that litigation is out of control, why is it forcing more people to go to court, which will lead directly to skyrocketing legal costs? And why is ICBC increasing its own lawyer’s salaries by 30% to 50%?

What is really going on here? Could it be that ICBC is deliberately running up litigation expenses to justify an increase in premiums? Or are they trying to manipulate government to make further legislative changes that erode the rights of injured people?

The casualties of the recent tactics by ICBC are far reaching. Consider the following:

  1. Victims of motor vehicle accidents simply want to be compensated fairly according to law. These people and their families will now be forced to endure the stress, expense and risk associated with an unnecessary Supreme Court trial.
  2. What about the already overburdened court system? Forcing victims of car accidents to needlessly go to court will lead to further delays in the court system. An overburdened court system means less access to justice for everyone.
  3. Has ICBC considered the social and economic consequences of unnecessary jury trials? ICBC almost always chooses trial by jury. They know judges will award proper compensation according to the principals of law. They also know that juries can be less predictable than judges and that unpredictability creates risk for people seeking fair compensation. So now tens of thousands of BC residents will be unnecessarily called to preform jury duty. They will be pulled away from their jobs, their businesses and their family responsibilities to decide cases that shouldn’t be in court in the first place.
  4. Family doctors, medical specialists and independent experts prepare reports to assist the court in assessing fair compensation. In the past, these reports facilitated out of court settlements. With ICBC’s new policy, these experts will now be dragged into court to be cross-examined by ICBC lawyers. Bringing these experts to court will only add to the cost of unnecessary litigation. More significantly, when a doctor is called into court, they have to cancel appointments for patients who often wait months or years to see them. This is unfair to patients and will have significant implications for our already overburdened medical system.

What is ICBC’s true motive for this new policy?  It’s unclear at this point but we do know that ICBC is using its privilege as a monopoly Crown Corporation to bully and inconvenience British Columbians and drive up litigation costs.  Look for ICBC to blame lawyers later this year for the skyrocketing litigation expenses they will have created.