The short answer is no, but it’s helpful to understand why “your insurance company” would behave like that, and what you can do about it.
First of all, on a most basic level, nobody starts a negotiation from the position they want to end up in. When you buy a car, you never pay the sticker price and the dealership never accepts your first offer. It’s the same with an injury claim negotiation but unfortunately, decisions you make buying a car are less complicated and less important that those you are required to make when resolving your injury claim.
This means that when the ICBC claims expert makes their opening offer, you the un-expert accident victim are in the less than enviable position of having to come up with an appropriate counter offer and a rationale to support it. Unless you’re a lawyer or an insurance adjuster yourself, it’s not likely that the playing field is going to be tilted in your favour.
Secondly, remember that when dealing with you on your injury claim ICBC is no longer “your insurance company”. They are paying your claim out of the policy of the careless motorist that did this to you in the first place. They represent that person and are under an actual contractual obligation to protect that person’s interests. You are just the person that is claiming against them.
Thirdly, injury claims are compensation for the negative impact on the lives and the bodies and minds of human beings. It’s complicated!. Many different settlement “amounts” can be justified, depending on what is and what is not taken into consideration. Essentially they can build a case for any settlement number they want and still go home and sleep like babies.
Fourthly, they deal with tens of thousands of injury claims every year. They pay for those claims with money from premiums they collect from the public and hold in trust — supposedly but not actually for the sole purpose of compensating accident victims. Unfortunately this leads to what I call “Regulatory Paranoia”. Workers Compensation also suffers from a similar disease.
“When in doubt deny” is a commonly used phrase to capture the essence of a good claims approach and tells you something about the Regulatory part of Regulatory Paranoia. It leaves you the victim being treated like a suspect in a crime, having to prove every nickel and dime of what you’ve lost.
Because life isn’t simple, some of that proof isn’t a matter of a receipt or a letter from an employer. More often it’s a matter of analysis and application of legal principles within a framework of what judges have accepted as fair in similar cases that have gone before. That framework is referred to as “legal precedent”.
Now you can look up legal precedent for yourself in the form of cases on the internet at the BC Judgments site to get some idea of what’s involved but like each human being, each case is different. Who the claimant is, the available evidence, the legal analysis employed, and the way the case is presented at trial or in negotiation are all variables that lead to results unique to each case.
So when you’re reading the ‘case law’ as it’s called, remember that just because some one before you has successfully negotiated a particular mine field doesn’t mean that you will. In fact, that field is littered with the remains of many failed law suits, ICBC favourable results achieved by some very competent claims people and ICBC lawyers. Unfortunately you can’t do it on your own. You really do need a lawyer, even if you don’t intend on going to trial, in fact especially if you don’t want to go to trial.
So it may come as a relief to you that most claims don’t go to trial. They are negotiated against what might happen at trial. ICBC will initially tell you that the usual amount negotiated for such and such a claim is so much. If you believe that I’ve got some land in Florida for you to buy.
Now let’s examine the Paranoia part of Regulatory Paranoia, the part based in fear ——- not yours, ICBC’s.
Remember the incredible volume, tens of thousands of injury claims a year. So ICBC always lives in fear of “opening up the floodgates”. See my article on accelerated depreciation for details but briefly, even when ICBC spends thousands of dollars fixing your car they still won’t pay one thin dime to compensate you for the obvious loss of value from having a car that’s been in an accident when it comes time to sell it.
They are afraid that if they pay one person for this, they will have to start paying everybody that has vehicle damage an extra amount. And when the Government is already pressing ICBC for “dividend payments” of about a third of a billion dollars a year with the already inflated premium levels that requires, they simply can’t afford it, economically or politically — so they turn off the tap as much as they can.
Like all big corporations they do this by applying “policy”. It’s their “policy” not to pay accelerated depreciation claims, even when there is a good chance they are wrong in law. This policy approach extends to resisting legitimate injury claims based on vehicle damage rather than human damage. It applies especially to the big ticket items of future wage loss, often referred to as ‘impaired earning capacity’, as well as the cost of future medical treatment.
Future based claims by definition involve a certain amount of speculation — the ‘crystal ball gazing’ judges are required to do. As a rule, ICBC won’t — to the disadvantage of you and thus to the advantage of the guilty party and the politicians that have their hands deep in the pockets of ICBC. Before ICBC will pay such claims they need to have a carefully prepared case, one presented in a way that is consistent with trial logic and supported by expert reports. For that, you need the Butler to serve up a fair settlement in this very important part of your life.
CALL YOUR LEGAL BUTLER TO DISCUSS ANY ASPECT OF YOUR PERSONAL INJURY CASE. I AM AVAILABLE TO YOU 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK AT 604-318-3838.
