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.
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.
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