Helpful Tips, Advice, & More From an Edmonton Injury Law Firm

You’ve just had a car accident and you’ve done your due diligence and completed the immediate next steps. What now? What other actions can you do to ensure fair compensation? Here are a few extra tips on what you should keep an eye on throughout the process. 

Strong Communication With Your Physician & Not Their Insurance Adjuster

Be sure to see your physician regularly (at least every month or two), and follow doctor's orders. This helps your case in a couple of ways - the doctor will be able to keep records of your progress, and it shows a desire on your part to get better.

Make sure you take the therapy and medication prescribed for your injuries, because if you don’t, you can bet that the other side will try to blame you for not recovering from those injuries as quickly as you should have!

Today’s post features McCourt Law Offices’ skilled Senior Litigation Assistant, who still suffers from injuries as a result of being involved in a rear-end motor vehicle accident exactly a year ago today: 

My name is Rachelle Leger. I am a 40 year-old mother of two children, a lifelong Albertan and a former insurance adjuster with over a decade of experience working on motor vehicle accident bodily injury claims. As an ex-industry insider, I can advise that the keenly competitive Alberta auto insurance business, like many industries, is cyclical. When profitability is high, new insurers enter the market and premiums remain relatively flat, as companies compete for market share. As competition inevitably intensifies, weaker players are exposed and either run away or raise their rates, creating for consumers pronounced differences from weaker company to stronger (perhaps more competently managed) company regarding quoted insurance prices and terms. Especially in a hard market, it pays for consumers to call around and obtain quotes from a number of insurers. Each time a hard market returns, insurance representatives for poorer performers must explain to shareholders and policyholders why their bottom lines are not as robust as insurers with superior profit margins, and why their premiums are consequently rising, often by as much as 15 to 30% more than other competitors in the marketplace. Yet, and this is crucial, even in years when some industry players post underwriting losses, auto insurance companies still register ample after-tax net profits from the massive revenues earned investing premium dollars and accumulated capital.

Injured car crash victims unrepresented by legal counsel will often hear from the negligent driver’s insurance adjuster, “You have soft-tissue injuries, so your pain and suffering compensation is capped at about $5,000.” But consider the fact that an insurance adjuster’s job is to settle the case for as little money as possible. When the adjuster is dealing with an unrepresented claimant, that may well mean a fraction of the actual value, for a couple of reasons:

• The insurance adjuster does this for a living and thus typically has a far better grasp of how to assess a claim than the injured layperson; and
• Even if the injured victim has some ballpark idea of the value of the claim, the adjuster knows that the chances that victim will recover fair compensation as a self-represented litigant up against an experienced insurance defence lawyer is somewhere between slim and none.

Distracted driving is risky behaviour that increases the chance of a car accident. Edmonton attorneys who represent personal injury claimants see first-hand the serious consequences of distracted driving. It leads to car accidents, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents and pedestrian accidents and leaves accident victims with injuries that may include whiplash, fractured bones, concussions, depression or anxiety, and chronic pain. In some cases, the accident victim will need long-term rehabilitation and may be left with permanent disability. While most people know that distracted driving is dangerous, not everyone knows what counts as “distracted driving” or what the penalties are under the laws in Alberta.

This month, our firm’s blog posts have examined the insurance industry’s odious lobby campaign to have serious injuries including concussions, PTSD and chronic pain labelled “minor” and subjected to the auto insurance compensation cap. Today’s post features Clare, a public relations specialist and longtime Albertan (whose husband just won re-election to Parliament -- congrats, Kerry!)

As noted in our last blog post a couple of weeks ago, some auto insurance lobbyists seem fond of fibbing -- and why not when it so clearly works for them? Fifteen years ago this month, by falsely claiming that injury claims were skyrocketing (they’d actually been in sharp decline for years) and that the insurance industry was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy (it was actually posting all-time record high profits), the insurance lobby secured government intervention in the form of an unnecessary regulatory scheme artificially capping compensation for Albertans who suffer relatively quickly healing sprains, strains or whiplash injuries due to the negligence of other motorists. Last year, Nötley Crüe threw more injured Albertans under the bus, adding those with certain jaw joint (TMJ) and psychological injuries to the list of victims barred from being fairly compensated by the insurers of the reckless &/or drunk drivers who hurt them.

For the last 15 years, the path between the offices of the Insurance Bureau of Canada and Alberta Finance has been short -- and well-worn. IBC, the amply financed lobbyist for the multibillion dollar, multinational insurance industry, has had little difficulty persuading bureaucrats and politicians (including those in the dearly departed, “one & done” NDP government) to restrict the rights of innocent injured Albertans so as to pad the profit margins of auto insurance companies. Fifteen years ago today, a provincial PC government past its prime enacted an unfair, unnecessary, unconservative regulation capping private auto insurance compensation for innocent Albertans injured by careless drivers. The regulation was implemented after persistent lobbying from an insurance industry whose pleas of poverty were, to borrow a phrase from philosopher Harry Frankfurt, "not germane to the enterprise of describing reality." In fact, insurance companies were enjoying all-time high profits prior to the cap, and have seen an eye-popping increase in profits ever since -- at the expense of Alberta motorists.

Building from our previous blog post on the matter, under the Minor Injury Regulation, certain injured auto accident victims are no longer entitled to fair compensation for their pain.

Most people hurt in car crashes suffer soft-tissue injuries - whiplash, sprains and strains to muscles, tendons and ligaments. If those are the only injuries you suffered in your accident, the soft tissue injury cap may mandate that you to receive only a small fraction of fair compensation for your pain.

On the other hand, if you suffered physical or psychological injuries in this accident other than whiplash, tendon, or musculo-ligamentous injuries or if those acute soft tissue injuries have evolved into chronic pain (pain persisting beyond 90 days post-accident despite proper treatment); make sure your doctors and therapists document those injuries.

The Alberta government has capped at about $5000 pain and suffering compensation for so-called “minor” injuries, stating that with government-mandated protocols treatments 90% of injured car crash victims should fully heal from their sprains, strains & whiplash within 90 days of the accident.

If, as a result of your accident injuries, you are less able to do your household chores and yard maintenance activities and therefore someone else is having to pick up the slack, you may be entitled to compensation for loss of homemaking capacity.

Certainly, since the Alberta Court of Appeal’s 1994 Benstead v. Murphy decision, it has been settled law in our province that loss of homemaking capacity claims (both past and future) are legitimate and separate heads of damages in tort cases.

Wendy Benstead was injured in a rear-end motor vehicle accident, and consequently was rendered less able to perform some of her usual household chores and yard maintenance activities. As a result, she received extra, gratuitous assistance in the performance of these tasks from her mom (Ms. Miller), husband Paul and son Chad.

If you have been injured in an accident, Edmonton injury lawyers can assist you with your personal injury claim. But how do you decide which lawyer will be the best for you? What makes a great accident injury lawyer? This post discusses what you should look for when hiring a personal injury lawyer, explains some of the advantages of hiring a local Edmonton accident injury lawyer, and highlights what sets the team of personal injury lawyers at McCourt Law Offices apart from other Edmonton accident injury lawyers.

For 15 years, McCourt Law Offices has been at the forefront of the fight for fair auto insurance legislation and regulations, as discussed at http://www.mccourtlaw.ca/info. Our efforts have included submissions to Alberta’s Auto Insurance Rate Board, including these submissions in 2009, 2010 and 2011:

With its defeat in the provincial election on April 16, 2019, the NDP became Alberta’s first ever one term government. Rachel Notley’s NDP took office after winning the previous election in 2015 with much promise to stand up for ordinary Albertans.  However, severely normal Albertans severely injured in auto accidents were left severely disappointed with the NDP.

Most people know the basics of what to do in the immediate aftermath of a car accident: report the accident to the police, seek medical attention, and notify your insurance company.