You have been injured in a motor vehicle accident that was not your fault. Your injuries have negatively impacted your life. You should be entitled to compensation for your pain and suffering, right? Well not so fast. In Ontario, you need to get over certain hurdles in order to get any compensation for your pain and suffering.
The first hurdle is what is called the “threshold”.
This is essentially an injury severity test that disentitles an injured person from any competition for pain and suffering unless their injury is ‘permanent’ and ‘serious’.
So, the first hurdle is that the injury must be a permanent one that does not resolve with time or treatment after an accident. Those whose lives have only temporarily been negatively impacted by an injury are entitled to nothing.
If an injury is permanent you may be entitled to compensation if your injury is deemed serious. The law sets out a complicated multi-step process to determine whether someone’s injury is impacting their life enough to be deemed serious. If not, they too are entitled to nothing.
Lastly, just to add insult to (permanent and serious) injury, those who meet the threshold and are entitled to compensation face a deductible that is taken off the amount of compensation which they are deemed to be entitled to. That deductible was set at $40,000 and increases every January. It currently sits at almost $45,000. This means that even someone with a permanent and serious injury could be entitled to nothing for pain and suffering if their damages are assessed at less than $45,000.
And, for those whose damages are assessed at an amount in excess of $45,000, their compensation will be automatically reduced by $45,000 which often leaves them with very little compensation for a permanent, serious injury.
If this doesn’t sound fair to you it’s because it isn’t, but it is the law in the Province of Ontario.
There are ways to navigate through this and maximize the recovery an injured person receives which a lawyer who specializes in personal injury law can help you with. At Beckett Injury Lawyers this is all we do so if you have been injured and need a lawyer to help you navigate these hurdles and maximize the amount of compensation you get we can help
