Embarking on yet another trial

Well, I have three judgements still outstanding for trials I completed for clients in October 2012, January 14th and 28th, 2013.  Fortunately the quick Court of Appeal decision in Li v. Newson upholding, for the most part, a decision of a jury in a 2011 trial or I would be awaiting 4 decisions. If I do not get a judgement soon, by the second week of March I could be waiting on 6 judgements!!!

With a week since my last trial, I am right back at it again for another trial starting later today.

I have to admit that such a trial schedule is demanding on my staff.  I have to thank my paralegals who handle the management of issues on files with such skill and thoughtfulness that I can solve a seemingly impossible amount of problems with little effort.  There is an incredible power that comes from working so closely with people that they know your response before you even have to say a word. Even more powerful is when you say the word, the response is half drafted before you even open your mouth or put pen to paper.  That is the character of a quality team and that is the character that defines my McComb Witten team.

I also want to commend the "A desk" legal assistants who have been labouring to put together back to back to back to back trials.  As a lawyer, we expect to have to work evenings and weekends when necessary.  I went into work this holiday long weekend and saw so many people stepping up to make things happen if felt like a regular work day.  That level of commitment is not typically expected of legal assistants, but is there in droves with our team.

Our "B desk" personnel are less experienced but eager to help in any way possible.  I've long heard that you can train skills but not attitude and with our current group of B desk staff we have an abundance of good attitude.  It makes it easy to invest in people when the people are quality people and so invested in the team.

Team is the ability for the sum to be greater than its parts.  Team is what we have at Mccomb Witten right now.  Without the hard work from my team, I would be sinking not swimming.

Thank you to all of my team mates at McComb Witten.  When the results come in, and they will come in, any success for our clients is owned by the whole team.  There is an energy at Mccomb Witten and that energy is infectious.  There is not a doubt in my mind that the spring of 2013 is going to define McComb Witten for years to come.

Hit and Run cases are complicated

There is no way around it; Hit and Run cases are complicated.  

The area of law that gives rise to a claim for personal injury and losses, such as out of pocket expenses and wage loss, is called Tort law.  Under Tort law which has developed through judges in what is called "the common law",  the injured person can sue the person that injured him or her (called in law, the Tortfeasor").  

What happens if the victim is unable to identify the Tortfeasor because the Tortfeasor fled the scene.  Under the common law, the victim has no remedies.  One cannot sue a Tortfeasor unless one knows who to sue.

This development in the law is very unsatisfactory.  It creates an incentive to flee the scene and leaves legitimate victims to suffer with no remedy.

To fix this problem, the government passed a law that modifies the common law.  The government passed law allows a resident of British Columbia to name ICBC in place of the unknown Tortfeasor.  The specific law is section 24 of theInsurance (Vehicle) Act and it is complicated. It is complicated even further because judges have interpreted the section in certain ways that would not make sense to someone not trained in this area of law (or in ways that do not make sense to someone who is trained in this area of law, but at least he or she knows the law even if it does not make sense!) 

The government and judges interpreting the legislation have made very strict rules on what a victim has to do in order to comply with the legislation.  I was once in front of a Registrar of the Supreme Court of British Columbia who was amazed at what was required and candidly admitted that he would not even know what was required of a victim to perfect (the legal word for meeting all of the requirements of the legislation) a claim under the hit and run provisions.

The law was complicated by the fact that ICBC was NEVER REQUIRED TO ADVISE A PERSON OF WHAT WAS REQUIRED.  This development in the law was really quite stunning to me.  Fortunately, a recent case has expanded the law in this area in a good way.  The case is Springer v. Kee.  

Keri Grenier, a lawyer in Kelowna, BC at the law firm Pushor Mitchell, has published an excellent blog post that I recommend to all my readers.  For your convenience here is a link:

Keri Grenier blog post

Thank you to Keri for putting word out about this issue and thank goodness some sanity has been inserted into the law on this issue.