Legal News

Published on: August 13, 2025

Motions which Waste the Court’s Time

In personal injury cases, you will hear a lot of lawyers, mediators, insurers and judges tell injured accident victims who are unfamiliar with civil litigation that the Courts are slow on account of a lack of resources. That’s very true.

But, what does having a lack of court resources look like and what does it mean?

What having a lack of resources means is that there isn’t enough money in the civil justice system to hear all of the cases which need to be heard.

This plays out with a shortage of judges, a shortage of court staff, and a lack of operating physical courtrooms themselves.

This is not because people don’t want to serve in these roles, or because we don’t want people to have their day in Court. It’s because there isn’t enough money budgeted to hire more people to handle the workload for the volumes of cases which need to be heard.

I’ve see cases which were commenced in Brampton, and then moved to Kitchener because the Brampton courthouse didn’t have the people to have the case heard. I’ve seen jurors drive to Brampton, only then to be bused to Kitchener for a jury trial because the trial could not be heard in Brampton that day.

Having practiced personal injury law for over 20 years, I’ve made note of some steps which could ease the burden on Courthouses and the civil litigation system, without burdening or making dramatic changes to civil litigation as we know it. Currently, there is a civil rules review committee which assembled and has made a number of recommendations to better stream line civil litigation cases, such as personal injury cases.

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Published on: May 8, 2025

Special Economic Zones, Personal Injury Law, and Eliminating Your Rights

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

The Ontario Government has proposed legislation to create “special economic zones” in order to speed up large scale projects such as the Ring of Fire, and a proposed tunnel under highway 401 in order to reduce traffic.

The Bill is called Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act (Bill 5 ) detailed of which can be found here.

As an aside, I love it how governments name their bills. Be forewarned. The name of bills often does the exact opposite of it’s name. It’s a PR play in an attempt at misdirection (kinda like how a magician pulls off a magic trick). It gets the public to look one way; or to think about the legislation in one way; in order to misdirect the public from seeing all of the bad stuff happening which is actually going to happen in a different direction. It’s a way for the government to create a narrative in a way which directs people away from the ugly truth of what’s actually going to take place. The Bill, called “Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act”, could also be aptly named the “Stripping All of Your Rights so We Can Dig Out Minerals and Build Stuff Really Really Quickly Act“.

If passed, the new law would allow the Ontario government to disregard any provincial laws currently in place (such as provincial environment, labour or insurance act rules) in order to get the project done as quickly as possible, without any red tape. The bill cuts all of the checks and balances in place to protect the public and to protect the environment. It’s being sold to the public as a way to kick start the economy over the threat of Donald Trump and tariffs being imposed by the United States on Canada and Ontario.

It might sound like a good idea, until you pause and think about the ramifications of the proposed bill to plow through all other bills.

For starters, the bill seems completely undemocratic, and borderline totalitarian. The piece of legislation allows the government to do whatever it wants; ignoring legislation what has existed for many years. The rules and laws won’t apply to them once this piece of legislation has passed, and is used. Even if it’s challenged in the Courts as a violation of a Charter Right, the government can enact the Notwithstanding Clause in order to get their way. The Ford Government has used the Notwithstanding Clause before; meaning that they won’t be afraid to use it again. It gives the government total and complete control. That’s what happens when a majority government has been elected. It’s their “mandate“. But, if this piece of legislation were put to a vote, I doubt that the majority on Ontarians would stand behind the idea of giving such power to the government.

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Published on: December 12, 2024

How the Canada Post Strike Impacts your Personal Injury Case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

The Canada Post strike is in week 4. The Federal Government has refused to intervene. This is rather odd given that they choose to intervene in some labour disputes, but not others. How they pick the ones to get involved with, and the ones to leave alone seems to be completely arbitrary, or out of touch, of the lives of Canadians.

The Canada Post strike isn’t just impacting your holiday packages and cards. It also has an impact on your personal injury case. How so?

Let’s share with you a sneak peak of how Canada Post and overall mail delivery is important to a personal injury law firm, and your personal injury case.

Not Everything Arrives via Fax, Email, Courier, or Bank Transfer

Lawyers use regular mail!!! Lawyers use regular mail a lot! So do doctors, accountants and other small, medium and large sized businesses. But the thing about lawyers is that we write letters. (Dave Letterman Mailbag Theme song here) We write letters. We write lots and lots of letters…LETTERS!!!! Sometimes the enclosures to these letters are large volumes of documents. Other times they are encrypted data keys. In any event, lawyers use Canada Post to get information out, or messages out in order to move the case forward. Because of the Canada Post strike, lawyers are resorting to using more faxes, emails and couriers. But the problem is….

Not everyone uses faxes and emails

I know that statement sounds crazy, but please hear me out. Many government agencies and offices still operate in the stone age. They don’t, or won’t, transmit documents via fax or email. The reason which some give is that it’s not safe or secure. But, I suspect that it’s because they don’t have the capacity or capability to do so. Lots of offices may not have large capacity scanners to get the job done. It’s easier to photocopy the records and send them out in the mail. OHIP Summaries still arrive from the Ministry of Health by regular mail. Police Reports and Officer’s notes and witness statements still arrive from many police forces by regular mail. Clinical notes and records from many hospitals (not all, but most), still arrive by regular mail. Clinical notes and records from many doctors offices still arrive by regular mail. To make matters even more complicated, in order to get these records, payment is required. Payment, in the overwhelming majority of cases is made by cheque, which arrives by regular mail. Do you really think that you can get a government clerk on the phone to make a Visa payment? Do you really think that all government offices and administrators have the systems and capability to receive payments online across multiple platforms? The reality is that the majority of government and civil service offices are set up to receive payment either in person (credit, debit), or via cheque received by regular mail. Their offices internally are also set up to produce documents and correspondence by way of regular mail. Still to this day, hospital records, medical records, police reports, officer’s notes, witness statements, tax returns, employment files: they are all mostly sent out by way of regular mail from source.

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Published on: November 20, 2024

Not Being Able to Sue for Personal Injuries in a Car Accident Case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

This week, the Provincial Government of Alberta will announce that people will no longer be able to sue for personal injuries arising from a car accident. I hate seeing when governments take away the rights of innocent people to best suit their corporate overlords.

This dramatic change to the law means innocent accident victims won’t be able to sue for personal injuries against:

Drunk Drivers
Distracted Drivers
Drugged Up Drivers
Incapacitated Drivers
Careless Drivers
Drivers too high to operate a vehicle
Driving driving illegally without a license
Grossly negligent drivers
Drag Racers
Stunt Drivers
Criminals who have stolen a car and who operate their vehicle like it’s Grand Theft Auto causing a serious collision and life threatening injuries. See the serious collision which took place on November 18, 2024 at Bathurst and Wilson in North York where a driver on bail operating a stolen vehicle hit a TTC Bus, injuring 9 innocent individuals.
Defendants who drive their vehicles so poorly, and so negligently, that they cause death to innocent people who are simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time
Anyone else who acts a fool behind then wheel and causes injuries to another innocent person

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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: October 19, 2023

Getting it wrong in your Personal Injury Case vs. Getting it Wrong on Social Media

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

They say that a lie has already spread around the world before the truth even has a chance to get up in the morning.

Words cannot ring more true after what we’ve seen circulating in the Middle East over the past 24 hours. Legacy media and many notable politicians have been quick to side with terrorists who celebrate death and teach hate because it makes for a great byline and makes them appear morally superior.

Yet, spreading outright lies is morally wrong. And when those lies entice others to act in violent ways, it gets violent and dangerous.

The right thing to do is make sure you’re getting the story right, before you proclaim what you believe to be the truth from a wide reaching and influential platform. But does anyone care about getting things right anymore?

It’s one thing to spew lies and hate into a vacuum; where those lies and hate are lost forever; never reaching an audience. But, it’s an entirely different thing when social media has afforded everyone with a cell phone a free and unvetted platform to reach the eyes and ears of nearly everyone in the world.

So, why aren’t we more committed to getting the story right?

Why is there a need to jump the gun before we get all of the facts straight?

Is there an award for being first to report on an entirely inaccurate story? I didn’t know that social media had turned into a race to post something; anything; even if it’s not accurate.

Since when did we devolve to this?

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Published on: September 13, 2023

Courthouse delays hurt Plaintiffs and helps Defendants in Personal Injury Cases

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

If you have been following the new of late, you may have heard of how the justice system is failing Canadians.

There is a serious shortage of money being allocated to our justice system, which is resulting in excessive delays and cases being thrown out as a cause of delay.

Recently, personal injury lawyer Brian Goldfinger was interviewed by CBC News to speak about the delays which happened to one his his clients. The case is an important one. It’s one of the first cases of sexual assault involving the the Canadian Military to be transferred from military Court to civilian Court. Mr. Goldfinger’s client made the strategic decision to have the case transferred out of military Court into civilian court so that she could get a fair shake at justice. Retired Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour recommended transferring all cases of sexual offences alleged to have been perpetrated by military members — including historical cases — to civilian authorities. It only made sense that Mr. Goldfinger’s client follow the recommendation of a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

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Published on: November 8, 2022

Attending at Motions Court for a Personal Injury Case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

Sometimes, during the course of a personal injury case, your lawyer will need to attend Court. But it’s neither for your trial, nor for pre-trial. It’s not even to set a date for trial, or to advise the Judge about the status of the case or readiness for trial.

The purpose of going to Court is because your personal injury lawyer will need something that only a Judge’s order can secure. Or, perhaps the Plaintiff lawyer and the Defendant lawyer cannot agree on how the case should move forward causing the case to be at a standstill. Whatever the reason for attending at Court, these interlocutory steps are just that. They are not the trial. They are intermediate steps which are common in personal injury cases. These interlocutory steps are called “motions”. You may hear a lawyer say that they “need to bring a motion“. This is exactly what they are referring to.

Civil motions Court across Ontario are backlogged. It’s nobody’s fault. This is just the reality of dealing with a chronically underfunded and over subscribed system. We have no statistics to support this statement, but we would guesstimate that the majority of civil motions relate to personal injury cases. The most common motions we see are motions for/relating to:

Motion for substituted service of Pleadings on a Defendant
Motion to Extend the time for service of the Statement of Claim (related to the motion for substituted service)
Motion to Amend the Pleadings
30.10 Motion to compel a party to produce records (which they haven’t produced despite repeated requests)
Undertakings/Refusals Motion
Motion to Add/substitute a Party to the Statement of Claim, or to add a Statutory Defendant

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Published on: October 25, 2021

Ready for Halloween Trick or Treating? Safety tips from a Personal Injury Lawyer

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

Halloween Trick Or Treating is fun, family friendly and exciting.

But when you take a step back and really examine what Halloween Trick or Treating really entails, it would make any parent cringe.

Knocking on the doors of strangers? Check.

Accepting candies from strangers? Check.

Running door to door at night in poorly visible costumes (while wearing masks with poor visibility)? Check.

All this while on a sugar high adrenaline rush fueled by chocolate and candy? Yup!

On any other night, you would strictly forbid your children from doing any of the above. But on Halloween, it’s all good.

Halloween should be fun, kinda spooky and totally safe. So let’s keep it that way.

The purpose of this year’s Halloween instalment of the Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog is to impart you the parents with some reminders and safety tips. Most of these tips you may already know; or may have forgotten. Nonetheless, it’s a good reminder or tool to keep your kids safe over Halloween.

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Published on: October 22, 2021

CERB Benefits and your Personal Injury Case

By Goldfinger Injury Lawyers

It’s really hard to say “no” to free money. This is particularly true when times are tough.

The COVID Pandemic has caused many industries to crumble; and in turn, many people to go months and months without pay.

Restaurants, tourism, retail, hospitality, events, personal care and personal service industries all come to mind. Many people have adapted and pivoted to earn a living. But many others have not and continue to experience hard times.

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) was designed to provide financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians who were directly affected by COVID-19.

The means that you would have needed to be gainfully employed to qualify for the CERB.

For some accident victims and disability claimants, qualifying and claiming the CERB presents a contradiction.

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