Ontario's provinical government has introduced legislation to reduce the prejudgment interest rate for pain and suffering damages in car acidents from 5% to 1.3%.  This is yet another step that will have the effect of taking money from innocent accident victims and putting it into the pockets of large insurance companies. In our view, if the pre-judgment interest rate is lowered there will be even less incentive for insurers to deal with motor vehicle accident claims promptly.  Instead, they will choose to delay settlement and keep money as long as possible and continue to make money from investments.   Insurers already make use of their resources to make the litigation process slow, expensive and [...]

The celebrated Spanish artist Pablo Picasso did not believe in accidents and said, “There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents”.  Although Picasso was speaking in the abstract, his words do resonate in the context of motor vehicle accidents.  Many collisions may arise out of chance, fluke, or unintentional behaviour, but many more are caused by the intentional behaviour of drivers and, though called accidents, are in fact fated encounters.  In this blog, we review the law related to the top three intentional behaviours that cause motor vehicle “accidents” to occur: distracted driving, careless driving, and driving under the [...]