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Most people around the Golden Horseshoe Area of Ontario woke up Sunday morning to snow. It was the first snowfall of the season. Normally, the first snow fall is just a warning shot. It snows; and it’s pretty. And very quickly, the snow melts away without causing any chaos. It’s a reminder to make our vehicles, our homes and ourselves “winter ready“. This means a mad rush to buy salt or sand for our driveways and walkways, getting our snow tires on our vehicles; having winter clothes and winter boots (which fit; especially for the children); making sure our vehicles have proper levels of antifreeze and windshield washer fluid (the stuff that works well in the winter); installing winter mats to our vehicles, homes and places of business and any other preparation that suits your needs for the winter weather. It’s quite a transition going from “this weather is tolerable” to “I don’t want to leave the house because it’s cold and yucky outside”.

After the first snowfall of the year, our law firm gets a lot of accident calls. Whether they are slip and fall calls, or car accident calls; we tend to see a lot more accidents after the first snowfall of the year. I have a lot of theories behind this. But, the primary theory always comes down to the fact that people aren’t ready for the first snowfall. They either forgot about how to deal with driving or simply walking in winter weather conditions. Or, they are new to dealing with winter weather conditions. If you are new to Canada, and coming from a country that doesn’t experience snow, ice or slush; then driving or just walking in your first snowfall is new and you don’t have the experience of handling these conditions. The other part of the equation is that people are taken by surprise by the first snowfall. They don’t have their winter boots ready. Their snow tires aren’t on their vehicles so they are sliding all over the roads. Finally, the city’s snow plows and salt trucks are ready, but they really aren’t in a winter maintenance grove because it’s their first time needing to be dispatched for the season. When you haven’t done something for a while (like trucks/snow plows sitting idle in a yard all year long), getting back into the swing of things can take time.

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What makes the Toronto Blue Jays unique as a Major League Baseball team, is that they are the only Major League Baseball Team which represents and draws fans from an entire nation. The Toronto Raptors have the same standing in the National Basketball Association. But, the Toronto Blue Jays seem to do a better job uniting a country. Perhaps this is because they have a longer history to draw from compared to the Toronto Raptors (1977 vs. 1995). Or perhaps it’s because the Toronto Blue Jays have had more success in their sport compared to the Toronto Raptors (2 championships and 1 finals appearance vs. 1 championship).

When the 2025 Major League Baseball season began, even the most optimistic Blue Jays fan did not expect to see the results we saw. The Toronto Blue Jays had finished the previous season dead last in their division. They had not signed their star player, Vladimir Guerrero to a contract; and Mr. Guerrero’s pending free agency; became a distraction whether the team and Mr. Guerrero liked it or not.

In 1985, the Toronto Blue Jays made their first real playoff run. In those days, there was no Wild Card playoff round. You needed to win your division in order to advance to the playoffs. The American League East has been categorized as the most difficult division in baseball for years. Having to compete with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, even in their most grim years, is still difficult. Baseball is a fabric of those cities and cultures. The same can be said for hockey in Toronto. But, the same cannot be said for baseball in Toronto either. You can try to call Toronto a baseball town; which it is. But, when push comes to shove, baseball still plays second fiddle to hockey.

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Lots of Canadians have been captivated by the Toronto Blue Jays playoff run into the World Series. A ball club which finished last in their division last year has made a historic turnaround which no fans or baseball pundits expected. They are the most mentally tough and resilient professional sports team I can remember.

One of the stories from the Toronto Blue Jays playoff run has been the injuries to the team, and their ability to cope with those injuries in order to compete at the highest level.

This got me thinking as a personal injury lawyer, and drawing comparisons to the injuries in the Toronto Blue Jays lineup and personal injury law. Specifically, dealing with long term disability cases.

When you think of long term disability, you have to think of it in binary or black and white terms. Either you are disabled, or you are not disabled. There is no middle ground or half way. For many people, this can present a major dilemma. The idea of going off work full time is daunting and scary. There is also no guarantee that the long term disability insurer will accept your claim. And if they do, there is no guarantee that your long term disability benefits won’t get cut off for one reason or another. It’s very scary to have to rely on your insurance company to make ends meet as unlike working, the payment of benefits is entirely outside of your control. You don’t know what the long term disability insurer is thinking; nor can y0u predict what they will do. What I recommend people do is expect the worst, but pray for the best.

The Toronto Blue Jays faced this predicament with a few of their players. You see, before a playoff series begins they have to announce their roster. There are limits on the number of players you can have on your roster. You want to have the right balance of starting pitchers, relievers, infielders, outfielders. Once the roster is set, you can’t go back and reset it, so that roster announcement is a very big strategic decision.

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You will often hear personal injury lawyers refer to the term “tort“, or “tort case”, or “tort claim” or “tort law”. But what is a tort anyways? Here is a quick breakdown.

Torte: Noun: a yummy and rich, often multilayered cake that can be made with little to no flour, using ground nuts or bread crumbs instead. These cakes are typically filled with ingredients like whipped cream, buttercream, jam, or fruit. Many traditional tortes, such as the Sachertorte and Linzer torte, have Austrian or German origins. Torte cakes are not legal terms. They are delicious deserts which make for wonderful housewarming presents. 

Torts: Person: John Tortorella aka “Torts” (born June 24, 1958) is an American professional ice hockey coach and former player. He most recently served as head coach for the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL). Tortorella has also been the head coach of the NHL’s New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vancouver Canucks and Columbus Blue Jackets. He led Tampa Bay to the 2004 Stanley Cup championship. I do not recommend bringing Tort with you into the Courtroom for a personal injury case. While I believe that he’s a great guy, and would make for a tenacious advocate, his expertise trends more towards hockey rather than personal injury litigation.

Tort: Noun: Legal: is a wrongful act other than a breach of contract for which relief may be obtained in the form of damages or an injunction. An act of injury or damage to a person or property that is covered by a law, so that the person can start a court action. Ontario car accident cases are divided into two cases: The Accident Benefit Part and the Tort Part. The Tort claim is the claim against the at fault driver who caused the accident in the first place. You will hear your personal injury lawyer describe this as the “Tort Claim” or the “Tort Case” or the “Tort Action“. Not to be confused with Torte (the delicious cake described above) or Torts, the Stanley Cup winning hockey coach described above. You can see how people can get confused!

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I was watching the film All The President’s Men from 1976. It stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Paul Woodward (Woodward and Bernstein) as the two Wash Post journalists who broke the Watergate Scandal involving President Richard Nixon. I was watching the moving because Robert Redford passed away last month, and I wanted to watch (re-watch) some of his work.

So much was different with the 70’s. The attire. The hardwire rotary dial phones (with multiple lines in fancy offices). The fact that people picked up their phones. If people were away from their desks, there were no answering machines. You would leave a message with a receptionist, and she (back then it was always a she) would leave the person a note (almost always on yellow paper) to call the person back.

What amazed me of Woodward and Bernstein was how easily they were able to access information, and how few barriers there existed back then to obtaining background information in those days. There are many more privacy barriers when it comes to access to information today.

In one scene, they attend at a library in Washington and they’re able to see instantaneously the names telephone numbers, addresses and amounts of all donors tied to the Democratic Party to elect the next President. With that hot list of contacts in hand, they’re able to knock door to door, or make cold calls. People actually either answered the door, or answered the phones to speak with these guys. Getting this sort of personal information so easily is almost unheard of these days. Getting people to cooperate with you is just as rare.

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Insurance companies love to hear when clients have “After The Event” insurance or “ATE” as it is known in the industry.

What is ATE?

At trial, a Judge can order that the losing party pay for the winning party’s legal costs. ATE is a policy of insurance meant to cover a Plaintiff if they lose at trial and they are ordered to pay the insurance company’s legal costs. This means that the Plaintiff would be covered up to the limits of the ATE policy. The amount of coverage depends on the policy itself. The better the policy, the more the Plaintiff would be covered should things go wrong after a loss at trial.

How are ATE Policies Sold?

ATE is an insurance policy which is generally sold to personal injury law firms to insure ALL of their personal injury clients; or clients with similar contingency fee arrangements. You won’t see ATE insurance for clients in non-litigation sorts of cases. ATE can be sold on individual policies, but generally, these are either hard to come by, or very expensive. The companies which sell ATE typically sell them to personal injury law firms to cover all of their files, some of their files; or more than 1 file. The business model is set up for bulk files and not individual files.

Can I take out my own individual ATE policy?

I have never seen an individual Plaintiff take out and pay for their own individual ATE policy, although I suspect that it’s entirely possible. I suspect that the answer to this is “no“, but it really depends on the appetite for risk of the insurance company. They would want the peace of mind knowing that there is a competent lawyer advancing the case rather than a self represented Plaintiff. But, anything can be sold at the right price if the insurer is flexible. I would imagine that the premiums for an individual policy without a lawyer would be very high to the point of prohibitive. But, if you told an insurer that a Plaintiff was willing to pay $500,000 for an ATE policy worth up to $200,000; I don’t think the insurer would be opposed to selling the policy knowing that they would be guaranteed to make $300,000 on the sale  of policy. Anything can be sold for the right price. Continue reading →

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I saw a YouTube Clip of a prominent American Trial Lawyer not long ago. It was very “us against them” in tone, but the messaging rang true.

For years, and in some cases, for decades, hard working people pay their hard earned after tax dollars to car insurers for premium payments. In Ontario, it’s illegal to drive a car without car insurance. So, paying your car premiums is the law; so you have to pay these premiums if you want to drive legaly.

More often than not, these payments are made to the same insurance company for years because studies show that people don’t often change insurance companies. That means you’re dealing with the same insurance company year, after year.

And year after year, nothing out of the ordinary will happen. You will pay your insurance premiums, and receive the occasional letter from your car insurer enclosing updated policy information and slips. But that’s pretty much it. You won’t ask a lot from your car insurer. And, in return, they won’t ask a lot from you aside from demanding the payment of premiums.

Car accidents and catastrophic events are the exception. They aren’t the rule. You can go your whole life without ever being involved in a serious car accident. And, let’s hope that’s the case because nobody wants to be involved in a car accident.

But, in the rare circumstance that you’ve been hurt or injured in a car accident; you would expect that the insurer who you have been dealing with for years to be there at your side in order to pay you the compensation which you deserve.

At the end of the day, you were in the wrong place, at the wrong time and have done nothing wrong. All that you are seeking is that you are compensated fairly for your losses, along with your pain and suffering.

But this is not how things work in personal injury cases. Instead of helping you out, the insurance company will use their immense resources to fight your claim every step of the way. They will pay experts, investigators and their lawyers thousands and thousands of dollars (if not more), to make sure that you aren’t compensated a single dime.

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I was chatting with my 8 year old son not long ago about house prices.

He was curious as to why a small home in geographically desirable part of Toronto would sell for more than a much larger home in less desirable town with less amenities and less access to services.

We spoke about the golden rule of real estate: Location, Location, Location.

People will pay more money for a home with easy access to transit, postal services, entertainment, schools, potable water etc. Living off the grid might be desirable for some, but not most people, and is far more difficult than living on the grid.

There is a golden rule for personal injury law as well: Credibility, Credibility, Credibility.

If a Court doesn’t accept what a Plaintiff has to say about their case; then chances are that the Plaintiff won’t win.

The same can be said for a Defendant. If a Court doesn’t accept the Defendant’s evidence, then there is a very good chance that the Defendant will not be successful.

But, here is the hurdle for the Plaintiff.

The Defendant, in the vast majority of personal injury cases, will only be able to provide evidence as it relates to liability (how the accident happened). The Defendant will not be able to speak to the other major 2 elements of a personal injury case. The Defendant cannot provide evidence with respect to causation. Nor can a Defendant provide evidence as it relates to injuries or damages. Any by not being able to comment on these areas, the Defendant can win the case. It’s an example of less is more. The Defendant won’t be able to dig themselves into a hole by saying something which they shouldn’t say; or by rubbing a judge or jury the wrong way. The Defendant will stick to the information which they know as it relates to liability; and then; in the majority of cases won’t have anything left to say.

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I have often seen a comparison between personal injury lawyers and real estate agents because of the way that they bill their clients.

Both realtors and personal injury lawyers take on files on a contingency fee basis. That means that they only get paid, unless there is an element of success (financial recovery) in the case. It has never made sense to me that personal injury lawyers and real estate agents are both paid on a contingency fee basis when the deals, the circumstances of the clients, and degree of difficult are so different when comparing the two industries.

Personal injury lawyers don’t need to take cases on a contingency fee basis. But, in the overwhelming majority of cases, we need to do so because our clients can’t afford to pay the high cost associated with modern day litigation. Even the most modest hourly rates are expensive. Even Court filing fees being charged by the Ministry of the Attorney General are expensive. The Court filing fee for a Statement of Claim is $243, which does not cover the cost of serving it which will tack on an extra few hundred dollars. The cost of filing a trial record with the Court is a staggering $859. On Court filing fees alone for a Statement of Claim and for filing a trial record, without taking into consideration any costs for a lawyer’s time, or the cost of a process server to get these documents served, an innocent accident victim has to pay to the Court a whopping $1,102! How on earth would a person who is too injured to work from their accident be able to afford that, let alone a lawyer’s time in preparing these documents or fighting the case on its merits.

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Our law firms handles a lot of car accident cases from across Ontario. Each case is different. But, many car accident cases all carry common threads, and common themes.

At the most basic level, a car accident case will involve Defendant Driver causing a car crash involving a Plaintiff Driver. Defendant driver will have made some sort of mistake or misjudgment while driving which personal injury lawyers refer to as negligence. If the Plaintiff cannot establish negligence (or fault) on the part of the Defendant driver, then, the case will likely fail. In order to succeed in a personal injury case, the Plaintiff must establish some sort of tort against a Defendant. This is called a cause of action. If there is no cause of action (like negligence), then a Plaintiff cannot win his or her case.

Some injuries are really bad, or catastrophic as a direct result of a car accident. Some of the worst injuries which our personal injuries lawyers see are spinal cord injuries (or injuries to the back or lumbar spine). These injuries can leave an innocent accident victim paralyzed and requiring around the clock attendant care along with loads and loads of car costs which unfortunately might not be covered by OHIP.

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