Accidents and Injuries
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Appeal decision protects some medical information: lawyer
Jun 23, 2010The Telegram
June 22, 2010
A recent Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court of Appeal decision should help prevent "fishing expeditions" in personal injury cases, says a St. John's lawyer.
"It's a strong corrective," said Ches Crosbie of the recent decision in an auto accident case.
"It increases the level of protection that people have in requiring confidential information of a medical or financial nature, unless there's demonstrated relevance to it."
In the case, Crosbie had appealed a decision on a court application that would have required his clients alleging injury to hand over detailed medical and financial information from three years prior to the December 2005 accident.
That included particulars on every doctor's visit, as well as to other health professionals and prescriptions.
The request was in response to an initial statement of claim that did not detail specifics of the personal injuries.
"The result of the application judge's decision was to legitimate too broad a range of questions at that stage of the proceeding," the Appeal Court decision reads.
"In so doing, he gave little or no consideration as to whether the plaintiffs' personal privacy was unnecessarily or disproportionally intruded upon."
The court said the search for information could have provoked "potentially unnecessary intrusion into the plaintiffs' private affairs."
The three-justice panel - Denis Roberts, Derek Green and Gale Welsh - said both sides should bear their own costs in the matter, considering the nature of the initial statement of claim.
Crosbie said it's been general practice in this jurisdiction to make a broad claim.
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Ontario Awards Climb Towards $20 Million
Dec 18, 2009Two recent eye catching Ontario decisions in personal injury cases show that courts in that province do not shy away from very large numbers.
In one case, the Ontario Court of Appeal confirmed an award of more than $15 million plus costs, given after a six week jury trial. The defendants appealed on both liability and damages.
In another case, a trial judge awarded a 15-year-old girl and her parents a total of $18,427,000 in damages. She had been severely brain injured in a crash. She was unemployable and required 24-hour supervision.
The judge awarded the maximum non-pecuniary general damages allowed by the so-called trilogy cases, namely $336,968. The plaintiff's mother received $160,000, her father $125,000, and her brother $50,000 for loss of guidance, care and companionship.
Most of the award was taken up with future care costs, at over $15 million. The court accepted evidence of a healthcare economist that healthcare costs are expected to rise at a rate greater than the general rate of inflation, and used a discount rate more generous than the prescribed rates. The defence argued for a 25% contingency deduction from the future cost of care award to reflect the possibility of diminished life expectancy, but the court held that the burden of establishing reduced life expectancy rested with the defendants. In the absence of such evidence, the court concluded that the plaintiff had a normal life expectancy.
(For Ches Crosbie's blog comments and links to these decisions see Ontario Courts Not Afraid of Large Numbers.)
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Province Has Lowest Injury Cost
Aug 21, 2009According to a new study of the human toll of injuries in Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador has the lowest per capita injury related cost in Canada. The total of direct medical costs and indirect costs was highest in Alberta, at $918, and lowest in this province, at $518 on average per resident.
Smart Risk, a charitable group that promotes injury prevention, commissioned a lengthy report entitled "The economic burden of injury in Canada" released recently. The cost of injuries both accidental and intended in Canada per year was reckoned at almost $20 billion.
The leading cause of all injury deaths was not transport related incidents, but suicide - responsible for 3,616 deaths in 2004, according to the report. Transport related incidents, including motor vehicle collisions, claimed 3,067 lives, and falls, most involving seniors, claimed 2,225 lives. - 3 - 10 -
Media Reports Lawyer's Options For Copter Crash Victims
Apr 06, 2009In a front page story, the Telegram weekend edition reported advice given by St. John’s lawyer Ches Crosbie to family members of those who perished in the Cougar/Sikorsky helicopter crash. On March 12, 2009 Cougar Flight 491 hit the ocean with tremendous force 11 minutes after losing oil pressure, killing 17 of the 18 on board.
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Mr. Crosbie had posted a blog discussing legal options for family members, and responded to questions from a Telegram reporter. Mr. Crosbie is a well known St. John’s personal injury and class action lawyer.
Mr. Crosbie was reported as saying that the bar on lawsuits under the Workers Compensation legislation likely would not apply. For more, see: Telegram article, Cougar’s Response Tardy?, and Families Review Legal Options in Wake of Copter Crash. -
Record $17 million injury award upheld
Jun 17, 2008Canadian Court Upholds $17 Million Verdict for Injured Child
That’s right – a Canadian court has upheld a verdict worth $17 million awarded by a jury to a child who was two years old when he fell out an apartment window and suffered devastating injuries. This largest ever award was made by an Ontario jury, and in a decision released in spring 2008 the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the award.
Harvinder Sandhu, now 13 years old, was just a toddler when he fell through a broken screen of his aunt and uncle’s fifth floor apartment on Toronto’s Martin Grove Road. The broken screen had been reported more than once to the building’s superintendent.
Harvinder “suffered numerous injuries, including a frontal lobe brain injury so severe that he will never be gainfully employed and will always require supervision,” the appeal court noted. The boy requires constant care.
The Ontario Superior Court jury awarded the plaintiffs $12,936,145.60 in January of 2006. Trial judge Justice Carolyn Horkins awarded and extra $4,182,039.02 in guardianship costs, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest.
The apartment owners raised 12 grounds of appeal to the panel of three Justices. For starters, the jury’s award was $1.336 million more than the plaintiff’s counsel had recommended in her jury address. The jury awarded the highest amount of non-pecuniary general damages permitted by the Supreme Court of Canada at $311,000, $100,000 to each of Harvinder’s parents and his brother under Ontario’s Family Law Act, plus damages for loss of future income at the highest level based on a retirement age of 65. The panel of judges dismissed all 12 grounds of appeal.
The appellant apartment owners also complained that the trial judge had wrongly allowed the entry of evidence of repairs. The appeal court disagreed, stating that the fact that repairs to the screens were made quickly and inexpensively after the accident was relevant to show that the appellants had failed to meet a reasonable standard in keeping the building in good repair or in making reasonable inspections for safety defects.
The appeal judges would not overturn this jury verdict against the weight of the evidence unless it was “so plainly unreasonable and unjust as to satisfy the court that no jury, reviewing the evidence as a whole and acting judicially, could have reached it.” They did not view the outcome of the 2006 trial as unreasonable or unjust.
The lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the court of appeal said this is the largest personal injury award affirmed at the appellate level in Canada. She also viewed the $100,000 derivative award to Harvinder’s brother, Parminder, “a vindication” because she has long fought for the recognition of the effect of devastating injuries on siblings.
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Local Physician Held Liable to Cancer Victim
Jul 22, 2009In a recent medical malpractice case, Arnold's Cove family doctor Peter J. Cleary has been ordered to pay damages to a former patient for failing to diagnose mouth cancer over a nine month period. The cancer could have been treated with minor surgery but progressed to the point where "commando" surgery on the patient's tongue, jaw and chest was required to cure the cancer.
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Sixty-two year old Clarenville native Basil Courtney was awarded an amount close to one million dollars for his extensive injuries in a Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, Trial Division decision released in early July. An amount of $165,000 was awarded for pain and suffering.
Dr. Cleary argued that cancer patients should expect a lower quality of care from doctors in Newfoundland than exists elsewhere in North America. The court rejected the argument (see para. 99).
Mr. Courtney, a pipefitter, had complained of a sore mouth during five visits to the doctor between July 1999 and April 2000. The court found that the physician was negligent in failing to do a proper examination and in failing to refer to a specialist for investigation and diagnosis. -
NEWFOUNDLAND COURT GIVES GO AHEAD TO FIVE CLASS ACTIONS RELATED TO RES
Jun 08, 2010The plaintiffs are Inuit and persons who attended certain residential schools on the coast of Labrador and the northern tip of Newfoundland from 1949 to the date of closure of these schools. The residential schools in question are Lockwood School, Yale School, Makkovik School, Nain School and St. Anthony School.
The plaintiffs say that because of this forced attendance at these schools they have experienced cultural deprivation, physical and emotional abuse and in some cases sexual abuse.
In reasons released today, Mr. Justice Robert A Fowler of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador (Trial Division) held that the action met all of the requirements for a class action under the Newfoundland Class Actions Act., especially for the years 1961 to 1979.
The plaintiffs argued that Canada, having a constitutional duty of care in relation to all aboriginal peoples in this country, systematically failed to live up to that duty and were specifically negligent in failing to live up to that duty in relation to the aboriginal peoples of coastal Labrador. The plaintiffs claim that Canada, at the moment of Confederation in 1949, assumed a fiduciary duty towards the aboriginal children who attended the residential school named in this case.
"In its most simple narrative," the judge stated " it has been accepted as an historical fact that Inuit people...existed and occupied the coast of Labrador as well as other northern parts of Canada as aboriginal people from time immemorial; and were there for hundreds of years prior to any contact with European people....These were the people of the land." The judge also stated "They were here first, they had a culture, a language, and the means of survival in a hostile environment."
Canada subsequently assumed jurisdiction over all the aboriginal peoples with the possible exception of the Inuit of Labrador. "It is not surprising then," the judge went on, "that there would be a conflict of cultures and the development of relationships to resolve such conflict. In our case, the Crown, originally the British Crown, now the Crown in right of Canada, assumed the dominant role of protecting these first inhabitants."
"Many of the class members are elderly are unlikely to survive protracted litigation and the inevitable appeals on an individual basis," said Steve Cooper, one of the co-counsel for the class.
"Requiring the plaintiffs to sue individually would be an enormous financial burden on any one of the plaintiffs and would have the potential to bar an entire group from court and prevent access to justice, said Kirk Baert, another co-counsel for the class.
For more information on this class proceeding, please visit http://www.kmlaw.ca or call:
Steve Cooper scooper@awoc.ca 780 464-7477
Ches Crosbie ccrosbie@chescrosbie.nf.net 709 5794000
Kirk Baert kbaert@kmlaw.ca 4165952117
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Payday Lender Settles Class Action
Apr 07, 2010FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
April 7, 2010 CHES CROSBIE, 579-4000
Email: ccb@chescrosbie.nf.net
PAYDAY LENDER SETTLES CLASS ACTION
MONEY MART CLASS ACTION SETTLES
A class action lawsuit against Money Mart, Dollar Financial and several named directors has settled for a value of $5 million dollars. The settlement covers customers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from January 1997 to March 31, 2010 who entered into a fast cash advance loan with the Defendants and which was repaid using a personal cheque. The settlement value is a mix of debt forgiveness, credits to customers for future business, and cash.
The settlement must be approved by courts in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in a joint hearing. The hearing date is set for May 26, 2010.
"I am pleased that the defendants have agreed to abide by the Nova Scotia regulatory regime on a voluntary basis", said St. John's class action lawyer Ches Crosbie. "Newfoundland still has no regulation of payday loan practices."
The class action lawsuits allege that interest charges by payday lenders violated the Criminal Code. The allegations have not been proved in court.
The representative plaintiff in the Newfoundland lawsuit is William Squires of St. John's, a retired journalist.
Other Facts:
- - Class members in Newfoundland and Labrador who can claim includes every customer of the defendants between January 1, 1997 and March 31, 2010 (the Class Period). The total number of class members in Atlantic Canada is 31,000, and the number of class members in Newfoundland and Labrador is 7,300. About two-thirds of these class members are in good standing with the defendants.
- - Breakdown of settlement value is cash $650,000, credits $3.3 million, debt forgiveness $1 million.
- - The three law firms who represent the plaintiffs will seek approval of fees, services tax and disbursements, totaling $600,000. The law firms are Ches Crosbie Barristers of St. John's, Wagners of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Crocco Hunter of Woodstock, New Brunswick.
- - Information about government's intentions for regulation of payday loan practices may be obtained from Department of Government Services, Minister Hon. Kevin O'Brien.
- - More information is available from the Settlement Agreement and in particular the schedules to it, posted at www.ChesCrosbie.com.
CHES CROSBIE BARRISTERS
169 Water Street, 4th Floor
St. John's, NL A1C 1B1
Telephone: 579-4000 or 888-579-3262
Facsimile: 579-9671
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Breast Cancer Testing - Claim Process
Feb 19, 2010We have received several inquiries from class members concerning the Claim Form. The Claim Form can be obtained from the Fund Administrator in one of the following ways:
1. By telephone at 1-866-553-1124;
2. By email at breastcancertesting@crawco.ca; or
3. By printing from www.nlbreastcancersettlement.ca.
If you are unsure as to which compensation category you belong, you can select "Category 7" on page 2 of the Claim Form.
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Breast Cancer Testing - Claim Process
Feb 19, 2010We have received several inquiries from class members concerning the Claim Form. The Claim Form can be obtained from the Fund Administrator in one of the following ways:
1. By telephone at 1-866-553-1124;
2. By email at breastcancertesting@crawco.ca; or
3. By printing from www.nlbreastcancersettlement.ca.
If you are unsure as to which compensation category you belong, you can select "Category 7" on page 2 of the Claim Form.
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169 Water Street
St. John's, NL
A1C 1B1
Phone: (709) 579-4000
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