Jury Category Archives — Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog Published by Toronto, Ontario Injury Attorney

Published on: March 24, 2025

Lights, Camera, Action: Pictures & Video in Personal Injury Cases

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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Published on: November 23, 2023

Crisis In the Courts! How Backlogs Are Harming Personal Injury Cases

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

I am a subscriber to a national newspaper. We get the print edition of the newspaper to our personal injury law firm. You read that right. We still get a print edition of the newspaper in the digital age. Our subscription comes with access to the online newspaper, so that that there are paywalls behind their articles. Regardless, we still get the print copy for the office.

An insert in todays newspaper was a popular legal magazine. It’s read by many lawyers across Canada and Ontario. It’s geared to the white collar Bay Street crowd. Those who are focused on business law. It’s not really geared at Main Street lawyers, those who practice directly on behalf of everyday people, such as personal injury lawyers, criminal law lawyer, or family law lawyers.

The headline of the magazine was eye catching; just as a headline ought to be; so kudos to the editors. It was their “Litigation Special” edition of the magazine, and the headline of the publication read “Crisis in The Courts: How Backlogs are Harming the Canadian Economy“.

As a litigation lawyer, I don’t disagree with this statement. But it struck me that the victim of this statement was the Canadian Economy and not the people of Canada; like the Canadian Economy has emotional feelings or something. Now, the Canadian Economy can mean a lot of things. But, when you ask someone about the Canadian Economy, you tend to think about big ticket, macro economic items such as Banking, Interest Rates, Personal and Corporate Taxes, Housing prices, the Stock Market, Imports and Exports, Inflation, National Debt, National Deficit, the Consumer Price Index and large government subsidies for business or infrastructure projects.

The Canadian Economy is a very broad term, but rarely does one’s mind go to the smaller line items which Canadians see everyday. But these smaller items are what we see in the Courts every day; and more frequently than those bigger ticket items.

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Published on: July 18, 2023

Things Personal Injury Lawyers Can’t Tell a Jury at Trial

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

Personal Injury Law in Ontario does not make sense. It’s overly complicated, and intentionally hides things from Jurors.

It would make sense to present a Juror (who likely has no prior experience being a Juror) with all of the facts so that they can make a just decision.

Yet, in personal injury cases, there are things which lawyers are NOT allowed to share with the jury. Insiders (like Judges, insurance adjusters, and lawyers) know about what can be shared with a jury, and what cannot. But jurors are intentionally left in the dark.

Here are a few things which lawyers cannot share with the jury, at a personal injury trial.

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Published on: March 6, 2023

Personal Responsibility in a Personal Injury Case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

Finding a personal injury lawyer who is knowledgeable, kind, sympathetic, and who will fight hard for you is important.

A good personal injury lawyer will listen, and give you advice to hopefully put you in a better position to move forward.

But, a personal injury lawyer doesn’t live with you.

A personal injury lawyer isn’t there when you go and see the doctor, to tell him/her what’s wrong with you. Nor can a personal injury lawyer force you to see your doctor. Nor can a personal injury lawyer call in a prescription medication on your behalf, attend at the pharmacy to pick it up, and force you to take said medication.

Everyday everyone makes decisions. Some decisions are complicated legal decisions. But other decisions are daily care and everyday decisions which cannot be delegated to another person unless you are a minor or a person who the Court has deemed to be under a disability.

Some decisions are helpful for a personal injury case like making the decision to take your prescription medication, as directed by your doctor; attending at medical appointments and therapy appointments.

Other decisions are hurtful to a personal injury case like not taking your prescription medication, as directed; and skipping out of medical or treatment appointments. Other bad decisions for a personal injury case may include doing things that your doctor said you should not be doing (like bungee jumping after a serious accident, taking a long flight or going on a long vacation without asking your doctor if that’s a wise thing to do).

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Published on: September 30, 2021

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and finding the “Truth” in a personal injury case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

September 30, 2021 marks Canada’s first ever National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The day honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process. Better late then never?

As a personal injury lawyer, the big theme in the title of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is the word “Truth“.

We are told as children, adults and throughout law school the importance of telling the truth; along with the importance of seeking out the truth.

But the truth can mean different things to different people.

How so?

There are two types of truths.

There are objective truths. These are facts or findings which nobody can deny or contradict.

Mathematics such as arithmetic and trigonometry are objective truths.

The time of day is an objective truth.

The earth being round (though not to Kyrie Irving); the planets orbit the sun, the chemical formula of water being H2O. These scientific truths are objective.

If you seek to discredit these objective truths, you will either be wrong; or appear as delusional. Or perhaps you’re a savant who has stumbled onto a new way of thinking which breaks the barriers or speed, sound and time; in which case we have all got a lot more learning to do 🙂

I trust you understand where I’m going with objective truths.

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Published on: August 23, 2021

A lesson in suppressing the Will of the Jury & leaving them in the dark for car accident cases

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

Car accident insurers love jury trials. How do I know this? Because in 99% of the car accident cases I have seen, Jury Notices are filed by the Defendant Insurer. If car insurers didn’t LOVE juries, they wouldn’t file jury notices so often.

What explains the car insurance industry’s affection of Jury Trials?

For starters, Juries are unpredictable. You have no idea if they will favour a Plaintiff, or a Defendant.

Is it because Jurors aren’t paid for their time and will be irritated that they have to miss work without pay sitting on a Jury? That feeling of irritation for being there will weigh negatively against a Plaintiff who brought the claim in the first place.

Is it because Jurors have to pay for parking (at select Courthouses) and gas to get to the Courthouse without getting compensated for their out of pocket expenses? That would weigh negatively against a Plaintiff as well.

Is it because instead of hearing an interesting case like you would see on television (murder, racketeering, drugs); instead they have to hear a car accident case where the main issue in dispute isn’t liability, but rather pain to a Plaintiff’s head, neck, back and shoulders which can get boring and stale pretty quickly. That doesn’t sound like a fun trial to hear at all, particularly if it goes on for a long time. There’s another factor which weighs negatively against a Plaintiff.

In all of these scenarios, a Juror doesn’t know which party filed the Jury Notice. As a result they look at the Plaintiff with extreme distain knowing that it was the Plaintiff’s case has caused them to sit on a Jury in the first place. Essentially, the Plaintiff is seen as wasting the Juror’s time and losing the Juror money when all along the Plaintiff never filed the Jury notice to begin with.

This is the harsh reality of civil jury trials in car accident cases in Ontario. But that reality gets even more harsh.

The will of then Jury is suppressed when awarding damages in a personal injury case. On top of that, Jurors are left in the dark for car accident cases.

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Published on: January 17, 2019

Chronic Pain, Fibromyalgia and Jury Cases in Ontario

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

For the 1% of personal injury cases which go to trial, the majority of those cases are tried by a Judge with a Jury.

Insurance companies automatically file Jury Notices to accompany their Statements of Defence because they know that jurors don’t like sitting through long personal injury cases. A disengaged and disgruntled juror will be less likely to side with the Plaintiff. A Judge sitting alone is trained, well versed and PAID to listen carefully to the facts. Jurors are not trained, not well versed and certainly not well paid to sit around for weeks listening to evidence. In some cases, the cost of parking, snacks and meals will outweigh the cost of the Juror’s daily stipend. Compounding the anger of a juror is the fact that many of them are employed and have to miss time from work without getting paid themselves to engage in jury duty. Nobody wins.

Jurors want to sit in on “cool trials“. What’s a “cool trial“. Think of a high profile murder case. That would be “cool” to sit in on. Or how about a violent assault, drug trafficking charge, or something involving organized crime? Anything out of a TV or movie plot would satisfy a juror’s appetite. Unfortunately, chronic pain, fibromyalgia and long term disability disputes don’t make very interesting screen plays.

Plaintiff personal injury lawyers know this. Plaintiffs themselves often do not. It’s hard for a Plaintiff to put him or herself in the position of a Judge or Jury hearing their own case. In the Plaintiff’s own mind: What else could be more important or more interesting than sitting through a 2-4 week trial to hear all about my injuries, disability and how the insurance company screwed me?

What really goes on in a juror’s mind is “who cares about this person; and; get me outta here so I can go back to my normal daily routine.” Continue reading →