Calculating Personal Injury Damages in BC

Calculating personal injury damages is a double-edged sword in BC. One the one hand it's nearly impossible to know early in a claim what the personal injury claim is worth.

On the other hand, in my view, it's good that calculating personal injury claims in BC is impossible to do early in a claim because that is indicative of the fact that BC is NOT no-fault jurisdiction.

What does no-fault mean?

No-fault means that damages and compensation for personal injury (usually restricted to personal injury from motor vehicle accidents) is based on a chart. X injury results in $Y amount compensation. Each injury results in a set amount of compensation.

Many jurisdictions have gone over to a no-fault system, only to compensate injured victims (those who are not at fault) inadequately (in my opinion).

In BC there is a no-fault scheme with the Workers' Compensation system. Being familiar with this system, there are no shortage of people who are not pleased with the compensation they receive after injuries, especially more serious injuries.

In a nutshell, no-fault compensatory schemes give all the decision-making power to the insurance company. Seldom do cases go to Court for 2 reasons:

The Court has little or no discretion to vary a no-fault compensatory scheme because the amounts are set out in legislation; and
There are very few personal injury lawyers available to take on cases by contingency because the no-fault scheme effectively eliminates the opportunity for injured victims to take their claim to a Court.

Therefore, the fact that calculating personal injury damages in BC is difficult, if not impossible early in a claim, is in my view a good element of the BC personal injury system.

That said, it can be helpful for injured victims to get a better understanding how personal injury damages are assessed in theory. Read this great article that explains how to calculate personal injury ICBC claims in British Columbia to see in theory and the approach used in BC to assess personal injury claims (including claims stemming from motor vehicle accidents)>