“You’ve been the victim of a drive down.”
Wow. I never thought it would happen to me. In truth, I didn’t even know what a “drive down” was until I visited the Brampton Fall Fair today and tried out the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) Safety Mobile simulator.
Surgeons and General Practitioners are the most accident-prone drivers, according to an analysis of two million insurance claims that reveals an extraordinary concentration of problem driving among healthcare professionals.
On Aug. 1, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously reversed a decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal and restored an arbitration award which the latter court had found to be “absurd.” The award had been delivered in 2008 by Leon Getz, a seasoned commercial arbitrator in Vancouver. http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&volume=34&number=18&article=3
The Plaintiff suffered from chronic neck pain and headaches following the collision. The Defendant arranged a defense medical exam with a physician who minimized the connection of the collision to the Plaintiff’s chronic symptoms noting the plaintiff had degenerative changes and that “he likely would have become symptomatic regardless of the accident“.
In rejecting this opinion the Court noted that the physicians assumed facts differed from those accepted by the Court and provided the following reasons:
Law researchers from the University of Windsor want judges to be more understanding of people handling their own cases.
[38] The law does not encourage indolence. An injured party has a duty to mitigate: see Graham v. Rogers, 2001 BCCA 432, at para. 35. In this type of case, the plaintiff must seek and follow the advice of his or her physician with the goal of overall improvement and recovery. http://bc-injury-law.com/blog/
Re “Auto insurance bonanza” (Alan Shanoff, Aug. 31): There is a need by insurers to spend on Independent Medical Examinations (IMEs). The reason is to ensure people who need treatment get the right treatment and to control overall costs for the millions of consumers who buy auto insurance in Ontario. Everyone knows there is a fraud problem. Insurance companies use IMEs to combat fraud. Clearly Mr. Shanoff would prefer that every lawyer and for-profit health provider diagnose almost every claimant with severe injuries to access more benefits.
Ralph Palumbo, Vice-President, Ontario Region, Insurance Bureau of Canada
(Alan Shanoff has never suggested there is no fraud in the auto insurance industry. What he has argued, convincingly, is that your industry spends far too much time and money fighting, denying and delaying legitimate claims) – Editor
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/09/letters-to-the-editor-sept-10
FAIR response: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/09/letters-to-the-editor-sept-10#comment-1582808288
With the questionable value of IMEs to the dispute process and with IBC’s intense focus on reducing claim costs, why do insurers continue to spend such significant amounts on IMEs?
Mr. Cunningham may have indirectly answered this question when he explained in his Final Report, that “…their reports and testimony are often used by insurers in the DRS to support benefit denials… [and] the IE assessor is selected because he or she might support the insurer’s position.”