Articles Posted in Insurance

Published on:

By

Readers of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog have asked for quick, easy to understand answers to their legal, personal injury related questions. We try to do this every week, but this week, we’re going to do something a bit different. Instead of focusing on one or two topics, or recent developments in the law; we’re going to give you a rapid fire Q & A with our directing lawyer, Brian Goldfinger (BG). We hope you get something out of this rapid fire question and answer series. If it’s a success, we’ll try to do it more often.

Q: What sort of cases does your law firm handle?

BG: We handle a wide variety of personal injury claims and insurance disputes. From catastrophic car accidents, brain injuries, motorcycle accidents, long term disability claims to dog bite claims; we handle them. Basically, if you’ve hurt or injured, our law firm can find a way to help you out if you have a cause of action and a valid claim.

Q: Does your law firm practice in any other areas of law aside from personal injury claims?

BG: No. We focus on in injury claims, and that’s pretty much all we do. Any legal matters for wills, estates, business law, criminal law, family law etc. all gets referred to my colleagues who focus on on those areas of the law.

Q: It all comes down to money, and our readers want to know how much it costs to meet with you.

BG: Meeting with me is FREE!

Q: But how much does it cost after the free meeting? There’s gotta be a catch.

BG: There’s NO COST after our free consultation. If we like you, and we like your case, then we will take your case on what’s called a “contingency fee basis”. This is a fancy legal term for you don’t have to pay any legal fees until your case settles. That means you pay legal fees at the end of the case, and the legal fees are contingent upon our recovery for you in your case.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

A recent CBC News story cited that chronic pain impacts one in five Canadians. That’s a helluva a lot of Canadians who have to deal with chronic pain. In case you’re wondering, “helluva” is NOT a legal term.

Are you suffering from chronic pain? Do you know what it’s like to live day after day with a pain that won’t subside. Do you know what it’s like to deal with pain that’s so bad you can’t focus, can’t concentrate, and causes you energy to deplete such that all you feel like doing is staying in bed all day long?

I wouldn’t wish this type of pain on my worst enemy. Dealing with chronic pain, and treating it are hard enough.

Having to explain your symptoms, along with your daily routine and why you can’t function for an already skeptical insurance adjuster and insurance lawyer are even more difficult.

Making matters even worse is that treating chronic pain isn’t always as simple as taking a pill and hoping that the pain goes away. The wait time to see a chronic pain doctor (commonly referred to as physiatrists, or rheumatologists or some family doctors with special training in chronic pain also qualify) can be over a year.

If you live in a rural community, then finding such a doctor might require travel to a more urban centre. I’ve seen clients from North Eastern Ontario and the Kawarthas travel to Peterborough or to Toronto for treatment. Sometimes they have to travel to Oshawa depending on the availability of doctors.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

When a police officer asks us a question, we’re taught to do our very best to co-operate. Why wouldn’t we want to co-operate with the authorities and help them do their jobs.

When I was young, we were taught in school to answer questions as best as we can. We weren’t very concerned with issues of fraud or breach of privacy as we are today.

Those hard and fast principals go out the door in a legal context.

In a legal setting, when you’re asked a question, you had better make sure that your answers aren’t going to hurt your case, or stop your case from proceeding before it’s even had a chance of getting off the ground.

These warnings don’t apply as much with authorities such as the police, as they would with insurance adjusters.

You would be amazed at the amount of personal and confidential information which accident victims freely give up to insurance companies over a simple phone call or during a simple statement.

After you’ve been involved in a serious car or motorcycle accident, it’s pretty safe to say that either one of the parties or the police will report the accident to the parties’ respective insurance companies.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

The idea behind Critical Illness Insurance sounds great.

If you suffer from a particular critical illness, then the insurance company will pay you a lump sum.

What sort of critical illnesses are covered are defined by the policy.

It all sounds great, and sounds like a very lucrative proposition. For many, this sort of insurance bets AGAINST your very own health. People think that if they sustain a heart attack, then they’ll be entitled to a lump sum under the policy. So, eating that hamburger and skipping that workout might actually pay out in the long term if your critical illness policy works the way you think it works.

Unfortunately, many of these policies don’t work they way that you think they work, or the way that the broker who sold you the policy explained it to you.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

You know what’s fun?

Posting status updates on Facebook.

Posting pictures on Instagram.

Posting videos on Vine.

Posting your day to day thoughts on Twitter.

Posting your new job on LinkedIn.

Social media is FUN.

But just because something is fun or popular, doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, particularly when you’re in the middle of a litigation battle against a large, deep pocketed insurance company.

The purpose of this Toronto Injury Blog Post is to show you how insurers can and WILL use social media against you to defeat your credibility and to defeat your personal injury case.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Hey Brian! As a lawyer, you must hear some crazy stories. (TRUE).

You probably have lots of strangers calling you every day, wanting to discuss their legal problems (TRUE).

What are some of the most commonly asked questions of you (GOOD QUESTION).

As an injury lawyer, we hear of, and see lots of crazy things; lots of sad things; and lots of things that you just can’t make up. Some of these stories, I’m not at liberty to share with the general public.

Regardless of the severity of the injury, one thing that ties most clients together are their questions and concerns for their respective cases. From Toronto to London to Peterborough, client questions are generally the same. Just shows you that geography, race, culture, creed; it doesn’t really matter. People are people, and they share many commonalities regardless of your background, upbringing, or the mechanism and nature of the injury.

So, without further a due, here are some of the most commonly asked questions we here from inquiries to Goldfinger Injury Lawyers.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

The laws continue to get tougher and tougher on accident victims in Ontario for no apparent reason.

Why?

It’s not like the victim of a drunk driving accident did anything wrong. So why is it then that innocent accident victims are being treated like criminals at every turn when dealing with large insurance companies? Is this the new reality?

It seems this way because it really is this way.

When No Fault Accident Benefits were introduced in Ontario circa the 1980’s, it was introduced as “consumer protection legislation” intended at helping accident victims recover from their injuires. In plain English, the laws were created and intended to PROTECT and ASSIST the CONSUMER (that’s you), in your time of need.

There was a contract in place between insured and insurer. The driver would pay premiums to the insurer. In return, should the driver need the insurer’s assistance, the insurer would step in and provide benefits to their insured so they could get back on their feet to business as usual.

So where did things go wrong?
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

This week’s entry comes straight from the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog reader mailbag.

Question: Goldfinger: Love the Blog. Hate the new head shots. But seriously, my wife and I are looking at getting insurance. You know. We were curious about life, disability, critical illness etc. You see it all. What should we be looking out for when buying our insurance. Best Regards JJ + PJ
Well JJ and PJ, thanks for your question. Always nice to hear from our readers.

NOTE: Lawyers don’t sell insurance. We sue insurers after they’ve denied your claim.

For starters, buying insurance is not an easy decision. For starters, I could count of a million things more exciting than insurance to spend your hard earned dollars on. On top of that, insurance can be expensive.

Secondly, have you ever read an insurance policy? They’re long, boring, and very difficult to understand. You really need to be a lawyer to truly understand what they’re trying to say. And even then, some clauses and and definitions contained in those policies are subject to one’s interpretation. Any ambiguity contained in a policy will be interpreted in your favour: BUT: do you really want to have to retain a lawyer and fight in Court for years and years over benefits, when you could have just saved the trouble and hassle and received them now? That’s just a big pain in the you know what; not to mention all of the unnecessary stress and anxiety which might come with involved in being in litigation with a large deep pocketed insurance company. Hey: sometimes it’s necessary. That’s what we’re here for.

Here are a few tips I’ve learned from litigating life insurance, disability insurance and critical illness insurance policies throughout the years.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

It’s an unscientific fact that insurance companies don’t like fibromyalgia claimants. It makes no difference of the context of that fibromyalgia claim. It could be for your short term disability claim, long term disability claim, slip and fall or car accident.

Don’t take it personally. It’s not YOU they don’t like. It’s your symptoms, injuries, and what they stand for.

Here’s the harsh reality about fibromyalgia. It won’t show up on an x-ray, CT scan, MRI or any other fancy objective scan. There are trigger points but those don’t show up on computer tests. Insurance companies LIKE those sort of tests. It puts your injuries in to a black and white context. If it’s there on the scan and visible to the naked eye on a computer screen, then you have it and you’re likely suffering from it. If your injury doesn’t show up on the scan, then it doesn’t exist. It’s probably a figment of your imagination, or a way for you to lie in your attempt to deceive the insurance company.

It makes it much easier for an insurance company to lump your claim in to a simple formula that an unskilled, and untrained adjuster can follow. If the claimant has an ankle fracture, then he/she is entitled to “X” amount of dollars. If the claimant has a broken femur then he/she is entitled to “Y” amount of dollars…And so forth. I hope you get the picture.

The moment that your injuries cannot be put in to a simple mathematical and easy to understand equation is the moment that the insurance company needs to think and take a better look at your claim. When the insurance company has to slow down its operations for your claim, it hampers their productivity and profits. This is NOT good for their business.

The problem is that fibromyagia cannot be put into a simple mathematical equation and cannot be looked at from a “black and white” perspective. There’s a lot of grey area when dealing with these types of claims.
Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Our office’s Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog has been a huge success at educating the general public about how car insurance works, how the Courts work with respect to personal injury claims, and all sort of other helpful information for accident victims, disability claimants and their families.

Our law firm prides itself on using easy to understand language to get the message across. We know that not everybody is comfortable reading hard to understand legal terms or “legalese” as we call it.

This has been a big week for car insurance law in Ontario. So much of the law involves politics. Believe it or not, politicians through our government create the laws we live by.

We vote for politicians, who in turn, have the power to make, break, or change laws. We often write about politics in the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog because decisions made at Queens Park have a major impact on personal injury law.

A few months ago, the Provincial Government introduced some radical changes to the Insurance Act. This is the piece of legislation which deals directly with how car accident law, and accident benefit law works. The changes were brought in very quickly, without any prior notice or debate. They were just passed through without the general public really knowing. You can read our previous blog post here posted on December 18, 2013.
Continue reading →

OTLA American Association for Justice Lexpert Ranked Lawyer
Contact Information
Toronto Office
167 Sheppard Ave W
Toronto, ON M2N 1M9
Phone: (416) 730-1777 Toll Free: (877) 730-1777 Fax: (416) 730-0955
London Meeting Office
341 Talbot St
London, ON N6A 2R5
Toll Free: (877) 730-1777
Peterborough Meeting Office
420 George St N #313
Peterborough, ON K9H 3R5
Toll Free: (877) 730-1777
Kitchener Meeting Office
290 King St E
Kitchener, ON N2G 2L3
Toll Free: (877) 730-1777
Owen Sound Meeting Office
1051 2nd Ave E
Owen Sound, ON N4K 2H8
Toll Free: (877) 730-1777

Past results are not indicative of future results.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2025, Goldfinger Law
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design