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It’s not mistake that Long term disability claims use the word “long“. Long is used for good reason.

Long is meant to define the duration of the period from the claimant’s first day off work, to the time period they are eligible to receive long term disability benefits. It’s a “long” period in contrast to a “short” period as found in short term disability claims.

Long also defines the duration for which the claimant is eligible to receive long term disability benefits. That period is longer than you would find in short term disability cases. In most long term disability cases, the eligibility period, or payment period, generally goes up to the age of 65. But, this is fact dependent upon the wording contained in the long term disability policy. In contrast, the duration of short term disability benefits is generally a few months (90 days, 120 days). This too is fact dependent and is specific to the wording of the policy. In any event, the use of the word “long” is meant to distinguish from the use of the word “short” in the case of disability policies.

For personal injury lawyers, and for many disability claimants, the use of the word “long” can also mean something completely different. It can be seen as a reminder to the claimant that it may take a long time to get an answer from the insurance company on whether or not the claim for benefits has been approved or denied.

In other circumstances, it can take a long time for the claimant to get paid their benefits, even after they’ve been approved.

For lawyers, the use of the word “long” is a gentle reminder that long term disability cases take time get through the Courts, or to ultimately resolve by way of Judgment or out of Court Settlement. Make no mistake, there is nothing “short” about a long term disability case once it’s been litigated.

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When an international student or a visitor to Canada has a serious accident in Ontario, it can get very complicated.

Who will pay for the medical treatment? The hospital visits? The ambulance? The out of pocket expenses? What about the loss of opportunity to pursue their studies, or the wage loss from a part time job?

These are really hard questions, and all depend on the facts of the case, along with the coverage of the injured party.

For starters, people in Canada on Student Visas, or a Visitors Permit won’t have access to the publicly funded OHIP system, the same way that Canadian Resident will. This is why it’s so important for the student or visitor to Canada to make sure that they have proper health care coverage before they come to Canada.

Having bad insurance will end up in a less desirable result. Just because an insurance plan is the cheapest, doesn’t mean that it’s the best. Often, you get what you pay for. Nobody ever expects to be involved in a serious accident, but if one happens, it sure helps to have a responsive and supportive insurer; rather than an insurance company which is the habit of denying claims, or being non-responsive to their insured.

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Ontario Courts, along with the civil litigation process are governed by a complex set of rules. These rules are made by people who have an understanding of how the law works, how cases work, and what problems our civil justice system is facing, and how those problems should be addressed.

Every once in a while, the rules are examined and tweaked, in order to better administer civil justice and help the system operate more efficiently.

The Civil Rules Review (CRR) was launched in January 2024, under the leadership of Co-Chairs Justice Cary Boswell of the Superior Court of Justice and a partner at a law firm. The mandate of the CRR is to conduct a comprehensive and complete review of the Rules and identify, through consultation, areas where targeted changes to the Rules would increase efficiency and access to justice for Ontarians, reduce complexity and costs, maximize the effective use of court resources, reduce delay, and leverage technical solutions.

The CRR Group has made a lot of recommendations, which, in my opinion, fail to achieve the goals set out by the CRR. In fact, what these recommendations will bring will be greater injustice to Plaintiffs seeking justice through the civil justice system. The proposed reforms favour Defendants, who need not work hard to advance a claim. It will embolden Defendants to sit back, and really not do much until absolutely necessary to do so.

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Let’s say that you get involved in a car accident during the course of your employment. What do you do? Who can you sue? Is it a WSIB claim? Is it a car accident case? Or is it both?

This issue comes up a lot in the practice of a personal injury lawyer, who does a lot of car accident work.

Let’s make something very clear. You cannot both claim WSIB benefits and sue, and claim accident benefits at the same time.

You you only pick one route. That decision, is called an “election“.

The Plaintiff can either “elect” to receive WSIB benefits and go the WSIB route.

Or the Plaintiff can opt out of WSIB, and “elect” to receive accident benefits, and go the suing route.

The Plaintiff cannot go both routes.

Sometimes, a Plaintiff does not have a choice and must go through the WSIB route. Here is an example of such a case:

The Plaintiff is driving his/her company car enroute to a jobsite. The Plaintiff gets involved in a terrible car accident. The car accident is not the Plaintiff’s fault, and the Plaintiff wants to sue the at fault driver for his/her damages and pain and suffering. But, as it turns out, the at fault driver was also driving a company car for a job. Both parties were deemed to be Schedule 1 employees who were in the course of their employment at the time of the car accident. Even though the parties worked for two completely different and unrelated employers, the fact that both were in the course of their employment at the time of the car accident is significant and presents a barrier to personal injury litigation. The reason is that the law says that a Schedule 1 employee in the course of his/her employment cannot sue another Schedule 1 employee who was also in the course of his/her employment (even for a car accident case!).  As a result, even though the Plaintiff may want to go the personal injury litigation route, s/he cannot do so. WSIB acts as a shield protecting the employers (and the at fault driver) from any litigation. The injured accident victim has no choice but to pursue WSIB benefits. The injured accident victim can try to advance a claim for damages against the at fault driver; but the case will in all likelihood get kicked out of Court on Application to the WSIB.

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On April 1st, the Ministry of the Attorney General released its Civil Rules Review Consultation Paper. It’s 122 pages in length, making it either the most elaborate April Fools prank on litigators I’ve ever seen; or something poorly thought out on many levels, including its release date.

If any of these changes are adopted, they are game changes in a bad way. It’s clear to me that the people behind these proposed changes aren’t the ones on the front lines of personal injury litigation; or aren’t listening to those who work on the front lines who see cases day in, day out.

These changes, if adopted will present significant barriers to access to justice for the general public. They will also drive litigation further towards AI in a bad way, thereby taking the human element out of litigation. Which is crazy to think given that the ultimate end of a case is trial, which is entirely based on testimony from people (not AI machines or algorithms). The proposals place a lot of emphasis on pre-litigation forms; which creates unnecessary make work projects for litigants. These are artificial barriers to litigating matters which should not exist. They are being proposed simply because the Courts can’t handle the volume of cases. These forms are a backdoor way to preventing litigants to advance their claims.

Here’s something I liked about the proposed rule changes: it makes it easier for lawyers to get off the record. Instead of wasting the Court’s time with motions to get off the record, the Working Group proposes that a lawyer should be entitled to requisition an order to be removed as counsel of record when the following preconditions (the “Preconditions”) have been met: (i) there are no deadlines (agreed upon or imposed by the Court or the Rules) or Court attendances within the next 90 days; (ii) there is no trial or dispositive hearing scheduled to be heard within the next 180 days; and (iii) the client is not under a disability. The requisition will need to be made on notice to the client and opposing parties. The lawyer seeking to get off the record will need to certify that the Preconditions have been met.  That’s great! Saves time, money and Court resources. This change ought to have been adopted 20+ years ago. The crazy thing is that a lawyer can get appointed as easily as filing a Notice of Appointment, or filing a Statement of Claim or Statement of Defence, or Notice of Change of Lawyer. But, if a lawyer has to get off the record, there’s still a whole song and dance that needs to go with it. The proposal is that the song and dance eliminated with the filing of a simple form (Can you hear the AI Bots grinning!?!)

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Every school has an Audio Visual Guy (The AV Guy). This was the person responsible for setting up the televisions, videos, slides, speakers, and other sort of audio/visual presentations in schools.

The AV Guy had a tiny office with no windows and poor ventilation. The AV office was once a broom closet, but was converted to accommodate the AV Guy with a small dated desk so that the AV Guy could sit in peace with all of the school’s AV supplies while simultaneously eating his lunch in privacy. The AV Guy’s office would be stacked to the wall with TVs, VCRs, speakers, mics, computers, receivers, and lots and lots of wires and cables! Oh those wires and cables. Some neatly folded. Others a tangled mess, hanging off walls, or anything else standing vertically. There were enough unkept wires and cables to cause a kid get tangled, and slip and fall. Perhaps the hazards of the AV office is why I became a personal injury lawyer, but that’s a another story.

In any event, have you given much thought as to why school’s have dedicated AV Guys? When you look at the position critically, they are not educators, nor are they custodians of the school. So why are education resources spent on AV personnel?

It’s because AV Guys are very important to schools and to educating students.

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Goldfinger Injury Lawyers handles a lot of dog bite, and dog attack cases. Brian Goldfinger’s first case that drew media attention was a dog bite case whereby a woman along with her therapy dog were viciously attacked by three pit bulls in Toronto. The case drew media attention because of the severity of the injuries to the victim, the severity of the injuries to the therapy dog, which eventually died; along with the fact that the dogs which did the attacking were pit bulls, or pit bull mixed breeds.

Liability in dog attack cases is at times, cut and dry.

Did the dog attack someone? Yes or No?

If the answer is yes, then there is a reverse onus which attaches to the dog owner. Regardless of whether or not the dog owner knew of the attack, or knew of the dog’s propensity to attack, or to be aggressive, the dog owner will be on the hook for the actions of his/her dog. At law, we call this concept “strict liability”. If the dog was on a leash, yet still attacked, the Defendant will still be at fault for the actions/aggressive of his/her dog. If the dog was not on a leash, well, then the actions of the dog, and the negligence of the dog owner are plain as day. Certainly, the parties will want to know if the Plaintiff provoked the attack, and this will be a factor in assessing liability, or any form of contribution.

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Last week I was interviewed by a journalist at the Globe & Mail newspaper (remember those?).

She was writing an article on car insurance, and increasing insurance rates in general in Ontario. She wanted to know what a boots on the ground personal injury lawyer was seeing.

I shared with her a few trends which I had observed over the past 12 months:

  1. Premiums were rising for drivers even if they had outstanding driving records with no claims
  2. Part of the reason which premiums appeared to be on the rise was the increase of auto thefts; coupled with the rise in prices for new vehicles, labour and auto parts. I suspect that the looming tariffs and trade war won’t help in that area. Some reports are suggesting that the price of new cars will go up between 15-25%
  3. But don’t fool yourself: insurance companies will find every excuse in the books to increase premiums. They will deliver less coverage, while charging you more money. You are paying more, and getting less in return.
  4. Our personal injury lawyers have noticed an uptick in uninsured claims.

What is an uninsured claim you might ask? Good question!

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Personal Injury Lawyers are familiar with hospitals. Visiting the hospital in order to see an innocent accident victim to conduct a consultation and explain to them their rights is part of the job as a personal injury lawyer. As such, personal injury lawyers get to know the ins and outs and routines at many hospitals. We also see some pretty weird stuff at hospital as well. And these weird occurrences are through no fault of the people hospitalized. It just so happens that hospital can be very strange places. How so you might ask?

For starters, there are no barriers to entry at the hospital. Every Canadian has free healthcare. You don’t have to pay, or pass security in order to get inside of a hospital. As such, you might have people wandering the hallways looking for shelter, a warm bed, pills to steal, supplies like sheets or pillows, or people looking to scam patients who are not at their best. As a personal injury lawyer, I’ve had many clients tell me that while they are staying at hospital, they’ve had strangers approach their bed purporting to be a hospital worker asking for their banking information. I can assure you that hospital staff are not asking patients for their banking information. This doesn’t happen. It can however happen that people with ill intentions enter the hospital trying to defraud or steal patients. While all hospital do have some form of security, it’s never enough to monitor an entire hospital. And, by the time that people have found out that they’ve been stolen from, or defrauded, it’s too late. The focus while staying in hospital is rarely about money or security because hospitals should be (and often are) safe spaces. Rather, it’s about health, recovery, and getting home.

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The policy limits under the majority of standard car insurance policies in Ontario is $1,000,000.

Those policy limits don’t stack. That means that if there are more than 1 vehicle involved in a car accident, it doesn’t mean that the Plaintiff has access to $1,000,000 under one policy, plus $1,000,000 under another policy. It means that the policy limits of the claim are limited to $1,000,000; which, if you think about it long and hard, isn’t all that much money in 2025. Will $1,000,000 buy you a home in Toronto proper? Perhaps it will buy you a home outside of Toronto, but after paying all of the closing costs, insurance, taxes, and furnishing the home, you might not be left with a whole lot. In any event, $1,000,000 today, is not the same as $1,000,000 decades ago.

Insurance companies are reluctant to write lump sum cheques for $1,000,000. There are a lot of policy reasons for that.  Namely, insurers don’t want their willingness to write the cheque, to come back and create a legal problem.

What do I mean by that?

Let’s assume that a car accident case settles for $1,000,000; and the insurer cuts a lump sum cheque. The Plaintiff then takes his/her share of the settlement funds, and blows through them in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. How can one do that? There are plenty of ways, I can assure you.

Months later, the Plaintiff retains a different personal injury lawyer to bring a claim against the insurance company, along with his/her old personal injury lawyer alleging that the settlement was either not enough (improvident); that it was not placed into a structure (improvident); or that the settlement never should have taken place to begin with.

There might be merit to the Plaintiff’s claim. There might be no merit at all. Nonetheless, after the claim has been made, the insurer and the old personal injury lawyer have to defend it; which is a pain in the you know what; particularly after the parties believe that the claim had settled. After all, the Plaintiff did receive a $1,000,000 which s/he agreed to.

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