Week Six: The Defence of Personal Injury Claims

The goal of this week’s class is to cover personal injury law from the perspective of the defence, including consideration of the relationship as between defence counsel, the insured defendant, and the insurer (the “Tripartite Relationship”), and the full and partial defences that may be advanced.

Readings:

• Lukasiewicz et al., “A Lawyer’s Duty to Opposing Counsel,” The Advocates’ Society, available online here.
• Uy v. Dhillon, 2019 BCSC 1136 (re contributory negligence)
• Inevitable accidents and seatbelts: Goronzy v McDonald, 2020 BCSC 869
• Surveillance: Williams v. Sekhon, 2019 BCSC 1511, at paras. 183-223
• Marchitelli, Rosa, “Injured woman secretly videotaped by insurer, then wrongly accused of fraud,” CBC News, 8/FEB/2021
• Forghani-Esfahani v Lester, 2019 BCSC 332 (re mitigation)
• The battle between commercial and public safety interests, see: Kovacs, S.L., “Liability waivers becoming a foe, not friend to the public interest,” The Lawyers Daily, August 29, 2017. 
• Waivers: Jamieson v. Whistler Mountain Resort Limited Partnership, 2017 BCSC 1001  and Apps v. Grouse Mountain Resorts Ltd., 2020 BCCA 78