Blog – Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers
Can governments and rail companies work together to reduce accidents?
When a person is injured in a car accident, contacting an experienced personal injury lawyer is second nature. Most members of the public understand that injury lawyers can help them navigate accident benefits disputes and perhaps access compensation for their pain and suffering. But what happens when their injury is caused by another mode of transportation, such as a train?
Railway safety was in the spotlight this February 15, when the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), Canada’s rail safety investigator, released its report on the 2016 death of 29-year-old Steven Harel in Moncton, New Brunswick. Mr. Harel was struck by a train and killed in the early hours of July 27 after his motorized wheelchair became stuck in a public railway crossing. The report calls on governments and the nation’s rail companies ‘to make railway crossing safer for people who use wheelchairs and other mobility devices,’ according to the Globe and Mail.
Following the accident, Mr. Harel’s family retained a personal injury lawyer to help them seek justice for their son’s death. A lawsuit filed against the Canadian National Railway (CN), the City of Moncton, and others alleges that both CN and the city ‘neglected their “duty of care” to inspect, maintain and fix the railway tracks, crossing and city streets and sidewalks, and also failed to facilitate safe public transportation and prevent accidents, particularly with regard to wheelchair-specific hazards,’ the Globe reports.
The TSB’s report did not find fault with the train, the train’s crew, or the wheelchair. It also ruled out suicide as an explanation for the accident, and confirmed that Mr. Harel was not impaired by drugs or alcohol.
Since 1990, just five fatal accidents involving assistive devices and railway crossing have been recorded in Canada. However, fatalities and serious injuries involving trains in general are much less rare. According to Operation Lifesaver, in 2016, 65 people were killed and 44 seriously injured on Canada’s railways, including 22 fatalities and 10 serious injuries in Ontario, alone. Last year, those numbers jumped to 72 fatalities and 44 serious injuries nationwide, including 33 fatalities and 10 serious injuries in Ontario.
While the majority of these events involved trespassing, a substantial number took place at public crosswalks. In both of these scenarios, a serious injury could be grounds to initiate a personal injury claim. If you’ve been involved in an accident at a rail crossing, contact Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers right away to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer. Our team can assess the validity of your claim and guide you on your path to compensation and recovery.
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Avoid slip-and-fall accidents for the remainder of the winter
Slip-and-fall incidents might seem innocuous – who hasn’t taken an occasional wintertime tumble? – but they can sometimes result in serious injuries. Slip-and-falls are especially dangerous for older people, who are at risk of breaks, fractures, and in rare cases brain or spinal injuries. If you or a member of your family has been injured in a fall, consider contacting Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to speak with an experienced slip-and-fall lawyer about the possibility of accessing compensation.
According to a Toronto Public Health report from October 2016, winter slip-and-fall accidents cause 30,000 emergency room visits and nearly 3,000 hospitalizations between 2006 and 2015 in Canada’s largest city. These accidents cost the Province of Ontario almost $4-million per year, while the city paid out roughly $6.7-million per year as a result of liability insurance claims.
On February 13, Dr. Brett Belchetz of Toronto told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning that better footwear choices could prevent at least some of these accidents.
“It’s amazing to me the number of times where I see people that are out, you know, women in their high heels, men wearing dress shows, with slippery flat bottoms,” he said. “Fashion is not the priority at this time of year. You want good, gripping soles. So go out, get a big ugly pair of winter boots that have very good treads on it.”
Property maintenance is also to blame in some cases. The CBC spoke with a personal injury lawyer who had represented clients who were unable to work for extended periods following slip-and-fall events. In order to secure compensation, a slip-and-fall lawyer must prove that the party responsible for clearing away snow or ice was grossly negligent in failing to do so. In some cases, it is the municipality’s responsibility; in others, the responsibility may fall to a business-owner or private resident.
Winter is slowly winding down in southern Ontario, but there is still plenty of time for treacherous walking conditions to materialize. In the weeks leading up to spring, make sure to exercise caution while out and about, and don’t forget to wear your “big ugly” winter boots.
Do you know what to do after a slip and fall accident? If you or a member of your family does suffer a fall, contact a slip-and-fall lawyer at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today. Our experienced and knowledgeable representatives can assess your claim and guide you on your path to compensation or recovery. Reach us today at 1-866-920-4242, or via the free consultation form at https://www.neinstein.com/contact/.
Image credit: SmartSign/Flickr
Pedestrians collisions on the rise in Toronto
Collisions between pedestrians and motor vehicles are sadly common in densely populated urban areas. On January 11 in Toronto, for example, 12 people were struck in eight separate collisions in a two hour period between 5 and 7 pm. While a personal injury lawyer can help accident victims secure compensation, the city must enact preventive measures to avoid future injuries.
The January 11 spate of accidents – which Toronto Police Service Const. Rob Reid called “not normal” and “an aberration that’s probably got a lot to do with the weather” while talking to the CBC – was in reality a microcosm of a dangerous start to the year for the city’s pedestrians.
Indeed, five pedestrians lost their lives in traffic accidents between January 1 and January 15, including the high profile case of five-year-old Camila De Almeida Torcato, who was pinned between two vehicles outside her school in North York.
With Toronto’s population growing quickly, the city has struggled to keep vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists safe. Forty-three pedestrians were killed in 2016, and 36 were killed in 2017. The five fatalities recorded during the first two weeks of 2018 represent a 250 per cent increase over the same time period last year.
In response, Toronto Police launched a week-long ‘pedestrian safety enforcement and education campaign’ on January 16, according to the CBC.
“We’ve got to change behaviour,” said Supt. Scott Baptist, unit commander of traffic services. “We’ve got people in the city – drivers, pedestrians and cyclists – just not paying 100 per cent attention to what they’re doing and it’s resulting in people being killed.”
“We have to get people to do the most basic things, so we can all be safe,” he added.
The safety initiative included a press release advising pedestrians stop ‘stop assuming drivers can see you,’ ‘stop crossing mid-block,’ and ‘avoid using distracting electronic devices when interacting with vehicular traffic.’
It also recommended that motorists stop driving ‘while inattentive or distracted.’
The initiative was criticized by some members of the community – including more than one personal injury lawyer – for putting an unfair onus of responsibility on pedestrians. Liam Brown, Press Officer at Grand Challenges Canada, took to Twitter to voice his displeasure.
“Pedestrians have the right of way in the majority of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in Toronto,” he wrote. “Instead, please focus on the main cause of collisions – distracted and aggressive drivers – and enforce the laws against speeding, distracted driving, and running stop signs.”
If you or a member of your family has been injured in a traffic collision, contact Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to speak with an experienced personal injury lawyer. We can advise you on your next steps and potentially help you access compensation.
Accidents on Ontario’s highways spike to begin New Year
During the winter months, Ontario car accident lawyers are often contacted by injury victims involved in automobile collisions. Driving in Ontario can be precarious at the best of times – when the weather turns sour, accidents and injuries often increase.
January 2018 was an unusually dangerous month on the province’s highways, however. On January 4, the Toronto Star reported that five people had been killed in automobile collisions on that day in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) alone. In Orangeville, a head-on collision left one dead and two seriously injured. In Pickering, three people died and one was seriously injured in a two-car collision. In Milton, a 52-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene of a collision between a car and a pickup truck.
In northeastern Ontario, the situation was similarly dire: four people died in three crashes in the region during the first week of the year.
These nine fatalities contributed to a staggering 26 deaths on Ontario’s highways between New Year’s Day and January 15. Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told the CBC that the first two weeks of 2018 had been “tragic and heartbreaking.”
“That’s a very startling number,” he added. On Twitter, Sgt. Schmidt noted that the 26 deaths were an increase of 271 per cent over the same period in 2017, when just seven people lost their lives.
What caused this sharp uptick in serious collisions? Though severe winter weather was a province-wide concern, Sgt. Schmidt insisted that road conditions weren’t solely to blame.
“Poor road conditions and poor weather conditions don’t cause crashes,” he said. “It’s poor driving that causes crashes.”
Ontario car accident lawyers will be unsurprised to hear that speeding and aggressive driving were factors in “several” of the fatal accidents, according to Schmidt. In the province’s north, long-time traffic inspector and safety consultant Mark Andrews told the CBC that distracted driving was an area of concern.
Andrews also lamented the lack of substantive progress on road safety initiatives.
“I hear the same issues being raised again and again of the cause [of collisions]… and ideas being raised that were raised 10 years ago,” he said. “The roads haven’t been developed, the cars haven’t been developed and the users haven’t kept up with what we now have for a vehicle to drive in. We’re not going to back up the clock. Technology won’t let us do that.”
If you or a member of your family has been injured in an automobile accident, contact the Ontario car accident lawyers at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation. We may be able to help you access compensation for your injuries.
Image credit: Bobby H./WikiMedia Commons
Decriminalization or zero-tolerance: which can reduce impaired driving?
Car accident lawyers, law enforcement officers, and road safety advocates agree: impaired driving remains a critical safety issue in Canada. Despite drunk driving being much less common today than it was in the 1970s and 80s, Canada still topped a recent list of 19 developed nations in the percentage of road deaths that involved alcohol impairment. Now, stakeholders are debating how best to address this enduring scourge.
In an article for Driving.ca, columnist Lorraine Summerfeld proposed a radical solution to end impaired driving “once and for all”: impose a zero tolerance policy. Rather than adhere to complicated guidelines that allow a certain number of drinks or certain blood-alcohol level, Summerfeld suggests making it flatly illegal to drive after drinking.
“We actually establish law on not whether you can drive while impaired, but how impaired you’re legally allowed to be. Scrap that,” she writes. “If you’re behind the wheel, you have to be clean.”
Summerfeld’s approach is sure to win fans, including some car accident lawyers, but prominent advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada are championing a very different option. On January 5, the CBC reported that MADD Canada CEO Andrew Murrie is ‘calling on the Ontario government to overhaul how it charges people caught driving drunk and to implement partial decriminalization.’
The province would not be alone: both Saskatchewan and Alberta are moving towards decriminalization after it proved effective in British Columbia. In B.C., first time impaired drivers are given a choice between administrative sanctions and criminal charges, providing they haven’t caused injuries or damage to property. Road deaths have fallen significantly since the province enacted the policy in 2010.
“The focus of that program is solely on things that might rehab and reduce recidivism, where the criminal code focuses more on a punishment,” Murie told the CBC. “Immediately behaviour changed [in B.C.]. People were continuing to go out and purchasing alcohol, but when it came to the actual act of driving their behaviours changed.”
Processing administrative sanctions is also quicker, easier, and less expensive than processing criminal charges.
“I think it’s a breath of fresh air in terms of re-evaluating what we’ve been doing about drinking and driving over the years,” said Mike Harrington, a retired police officer, to CBC’s Ontario Today. “We really haven’t changed a whole lot, other than some procedures and penalties. A fresh look at anything like that is always work a look.”
If you’ve been injured in an automotive collision, contact the car accident lawyers at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation.
Imaged credit: Airman st Class Zachary Hada
Ottawa attempts to communicate dangers of drug-impaired driving ahead of marijuana legalization
Marijuana legalization is around the corner, and road safety advocates are grappling with the fact that Canadians may not understand the extent of the drug’s risks. In December, the federal government, in partnership with MADD Canada, Young Drivers of Canada, the Canadian Automobile Association, and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police launched a 30-second video ad warning young people not to drive while high. The ad is currently running on television, social media, and in movie theatres.
The $3-million campaign is clearly targeted at 16- to 24-year-olds: the cast is teenaged and the first 20 seconds of the video are shot through social media filters on a smartphone screen. Toward the end of the video the car is struck by another vehicle and a voiceover states: “Your life can change in an instant. Don’t drive high.”
“Too many Canadians badly need to hear that message – too many people downplay the potentially deadly risks of driving high,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said, according to the CBC.
The video, which is part of a five-year, $46-million federal communication initiative, couldn’t have come at a better time. With only months remaining prior to legalization, a recent Health Canada study suggests many Canadians – particularly marijuana users – don’t fully grasp the danger of drug-impaired driving.
“Three quarters (75%) of all respondents reported that they think that cannabis use affects driving,” the report reads. “This drops to 50% when looking at responses from respondents who reported using cannabis in the past 12 months, while less than a quarter of them responded that it depends (24%), or that it did not affect driving (19%).”
Any car accident lawyer would be disappointed to hear that half of marijuana users don’t think the drug affects driving. Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor, meanwhile, said the survey results “reinforce why we have invested in targeted public education and awareness efforts.”
MADD Canada national president Patricia Hynes-Coates insisted that public messaging campaigns will prove beneficial.
“We know that if this campaign and the campaigns MADD Canada runs and all these other organizations are running save one life, then we know it’s well worth running these programs,” she said. “If none of us have to put a loved one into a cold grave, then we have accomplished our jobs.”
From a car accident lawyer’s perspective, the many dangers of driving while high are clear. Personal injury lawyers are familiar with impaired driving accidents and understand the potential extent of the injuries they can cause.
If you or a member of your family has been injured in a motor vehicle collision, contact a car accident lawyer at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation. Our team can help you understand your legal options and advise you on your path to recovery.
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Toronto trustee’s motion aims to reduce dooring
If you were to ask an urban cyclist or a bicycle accident lawyer about the biggest risks facing riders in large cities, “dooring” – when a driver opens their car door and strikes a cyclist – would likely top the list. In Toronto, where population growth and traffic issues have led to an influx of cyclists on the roads, dooring accidents increased each year from 2014 to 2016, when they peaked at 209.
Personal injury lawyers working in Canada’s large cities have become familiar with the dooring phenomenon in recent years. Collisions between vulnerable road users – cyclists and pedestrians – and motorized vehicles can cause some of the most serious injuries that occur on Canadian roads. While dooring incidents rarely result in long-term disabilities or death, any bicycle accident lawyer can tell you that they present significant risks.
Last November, a motion spearheaded by Toronto District School Board trustee for Etobicoke Centre Chris Glover was heard by the city’s Public Works committee. The motion recommended asking the province to update the Highway Traffic Act to address concerns around dooring, according to the CBC.
Today, drivers who door cyclists face a fine of up to $1,000 and three demerit points. However, they are not considered liable when a passenger in the car commits the same act. Glover’s motion aims to change that; he himself was doored by an Uber passenger in 2016.
“He opened the back door on me,” Glover said. “I hit the back door. I got bruises all down my left arm and left leg. My bike wheel was twisted.”
Glover needed several months to recover from his injuries.
“We need drivers to be partly responsible,” he added.
Besides holding drivers accountable for the actions of their passengers, Glover’s motion recommends teaching the “Dutch Reach” in driver education courses, and including the technique on the provincial G1 driving exam.
Per the CBC, the Dutch Reach maneuver occurs when a driver or passenger uses the arm opposite their door to open it, forcing the person to rotate their head and shoulders in the direction of approaching cyclists.
The motion also suggests that ride share companies like Uber mandate cyclist safety training for their drivers, and that rear view mirrors be installed on the passenger doors of vehicles for hire.
If you or someone you know has been injured while riding their bike, contact a bicycle accident lawyer at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to find out how our experienced team can help you access compensation.
Understanding the notice letter in personal injury lawsuits
When an individual sustains an injury as a result of the negligence or malpractice of another person, they may be entitled to compensation. Unfortunately, as any personal injury lawyer in Ontario can attest, the process of securing compensation is often long, drawn out, and painful. Today, we’ll look at the ‘notice letter,’ an important first step in initiating legal action when you have suffered a personal injury.
If it is decided that an injury victim is entitled to compensation, their entitlement begins at the moment the injury occurred. For that reason, successful plaintiffs in Ontario’s courts are eligible to receive ‘prejudgment interest’ – interest that accumulates on the money they are owed prior to it being paid – provided they file a notice letter with the defendant.
The format of notice letters may vary depending on the personal injury lawyer in Ontario that the plaintiff hires, but in general, each letter should identify the injured person, state how they were injured, and inform the recipient that legal action is being considered. In most cases, the recipient will forward the notice to their insurance provider.
As stated above, the primary purpose of a notice letter is to identify the date the injury occurred in order to accurately calculate prejudgment interest. According to two recent Ontario Court of Appeal decisions – Cobb v. Long Estate and El-Khodr v. Lackie – the rate should reflect “the bank rate at the end of the first day of the last month of the quarter preceding the quarter in which the proceeding was commenced,” as stipulated by the Courts of Justice Act. In other words, the action commenced in January 2018, as confirmed by a notice letter, would use the bank interest rate from December 2017.
Notice letters are also important in personal injury cases where a municipality is at fault. According to Ontario’s Municipal Act, “no action shall be brought for the recovery of damages under subsection 2 unless, within 10 days after the occurrence of the injury, written notice of the claim and of the injury complained of has been served upon or sent by registered mail to the Clerk of the Municipality.”
If you have suffered an injury and believe that you are entitled to compensation, you should immediately contact a personal injury lawyer in Ontario to discuss your legal options. Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers’ team of experienced representatives can help you file the necessary documents to initiate a claim and look after the legal minutiae while you focus on your recovery.
Ontario announces changes to auto insurance system
The Province of Ontario will once again attempt to lower its auto insurance premiums, which are currently the highest in the nation despite the province’s relatively low rates of auto accidents and fatalities. According to Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s early-December announcement, the initiative will target auto insurance fraud, which costs as much as $1.6-billion a year. Personal injury lawyers, meanwhile, are worried the changes will harm accident victims.
“We recognize that in order to achieve substantive, sustained rate reductions over time, we’ve got to make these structural changes,” Sousa told reporters on December 5. “The gumming of the system, the abuse within the system is creating unnecessary costs.”
Included in the government’s new strategy are the development of standard treatment plans for common injuries like whiplash and sprains; the creation of independent examination centres to provide unbiased medical assessments; and the establishment of a new office to address fraud, the CBC reports. The province believes these initiatives will tackle issues identified by David Marshall in his report on the auto insurance system, Fair Benefits Fairly Delivered.
This is the latest attempt by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal Government to fulfill its campaign promise to reduce premiums by 15 per cent from 2013 levels. Today, premiums are around 8 per cent lower, on average, than they were four years ago.
Unfortunately for the province’s injury victims and the personal injury lawyers who represent them, modest premium reductions have coincided with drastic cuts to available accident benefits. Some members of the legal community believe the most recent changes will further complicate matters.
“I foresee more difficulties for injury victims in the future, I foresee problems claiming benefits and having them actually paid out,” one Toronto injury lawyer told the CBC. “None of these changes that are being implemented today will in fact help anybody. It’s supposed to provide clarity and less confusion but it really does the exact opposite.”
Critics are especially concerned by the proposed independent examination centres, which they say resemble the province’s disastrous Designated Assessment Centres (DACs) that operated from 1994 to 2006. Many saw the DAC strategy as a failure, though Sousa maintains that the independent examination centres “will not be held accountable to an insurance company, or a legal profession.”
If you have been injured in an automotive accident and are interested in pursuing a legal claim, contact Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers today to learn how we can help. Our team has helped injured Ontarians access compensation and benefits for decades.
The Globe and Mail publishes investigation into biased medical reporting
In May, we posted a blog focused on ‘consensus reporting,’ a practice defined by Law Times as “having an expert summarize the reports of all the other experts in a personal injury case.” The practice, which is well known to Ontario personal injury lawyers, had come under harsh scrutiny following a libel suit launched by Toronto physician Dr. Howard Platnick against former Ontario Trial Lawyer Association (OTLA) President Maia Bent. In the case, Platnick claimed Bent had hurt his business by warning fellow lawyers about his questionable impartiality.
Justice Sean Dunphy rejected this argument and wrote in his decision that Platnick’s medical consensus reports were “not an objective summary of the underlying medical reports themselves so much as a summary of the conclusions reached” by the doctor. In other words, Dunphy found that Platnick tailored the reports to favour his clients, who were often auto insurance providers.
On December 1, 2017, the Globe and Mail published a lengthy article on the auto insurance industry’s practice of hiring medical professionals to produce biased reports on accident victims, and Platnick was once again implicated. The article presents him as a model example of a doctor who profits from producing slanted medical reports.
“In Ontario and B.C. alone,” the article reads, “hundreds of Canadian doctors take in roughly $240-million a year collectively, putting their names to accident injury assessments for the auto-insurance industry.”
The investigative report is based on a Globe and Mail review of roughly 300 court and arbitration decisions on car accident cases in Ontario and British Columbia. It found that assessment companies acting as middle men hire physicians to perform independent medical evaluations (IMEs) on insurers’ behalves. The assessment companies take a cut of the fees – which are drawn from drivers’ premiums – and the insurance companies use the biased reports to limit benefits and treatment payouts to accident victims.
While the paid doctors and insurance companies profit from this practice, the individuals represented by Ontario personal injury lawyers are left to suffer.
“Some legitimately injured accident victims suffer and deteriorate for years without money for proper treatment, while insurers send them to a merry-go-round of doctors, all well paid to keep challenging them on whether they are really injured,” the article reads.
The Ontario personal injury lawyers at Neinstein Personal Injury Lawyers have been representing seriously and catastrophically injured Ontarians for decades. If you have been injured in an automotive accident, contact us today to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation and learn how we can help you access compensation.
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