Does Ontario Insurance Act Cover Cycling Accidents?

Now, Ontario is a province which is well known for its cycling culture. However, despite the majority of the cities in it having designated and special paths as well as lanes for cyclists for them to go to work and for recreations, accidents involving a cyclist tend to happen a lot more often than they should. Unfortunately, these accidents oftentimes result in grave injuries and particularly serious damages because cyclists are far less protected than the other participants in the traffic.

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Does Emotional Distress After An Accident Call For Higher Amount of Compensation?

Now, the truth is that being involved in an accident, regardless of the kind, is something particularly disturbing. However, once we are through with the recovery and everything seems to be getting back to normal, you might consider getting compensated for the troubles you had to go through. Oftentimes, nevertheless, you would think only about tangible damages such as physical injuries, the cost of your car repairs or the number of days that you were off work and further on.

There are, however, different types of damages that you might want to consider and you don’t want to forget and leave out. Emotional distress, for instance, is a particularly bothersome and incredibly complicated condition which could cause tremendous troubles in the long run. Your mental health, just like your physical health, is particularly important and you might want to take it into account just as much.

If you’ve been involved in a trauma as a result of an accident, especially if the accident was serious, you might have undergone a tremendous amount of stress. This is something that doesn’t go away overnight and it could easily take years to recover from. That’s especially true for dramatic accidents. This stress can easily lead to a wide range of psychological issues which could easily take a sever toll on your ability to function properly. They are going to require considerable and reliable medical treatment to overcome. With this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the signs that you might be experiencing abnormal emotional distress which has resulted from the trauma. Some of the symptoms include:

·         Panic attacks, Nightmares

·         Changes in your mood and temperament

·         Inability to get a good night sleep

·         Memory problems

·         Mood swings and many of the kind

These symptoms can easily be symptomatic of characteristic and serious conditions such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) or a panic disorder, for instance. It takes weeks or even months of therapy and intensive psychological treatment to overcome such trauma.

Now, these symptoms and conditions aren’t easily quantifiable. They are left to the discretion of the court. You can’t prove their worth with a document like for non-pecuniary special damages. They are carefully examined each separate case and the amounts are awarded by the jury. With this in mind, the lawyer’s task is to make sure that everything is handled perfectly and that all the necessary documentation attesting to the existence of the condition are being laid out. Furthermore, it’s his responsibility to question the professionals who’ve diagnosed the patient in order to attest that the emotional distress is actually presence. These people are going to lay out the extend of the condition and provide the court with an estimate of their severity. This should allow the latter to make a responsible decision when it comes to the actual compensation. Your lawyer will be able to defend your eligibility and help you through the complete process.

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Is Your Case Considered As Medical Malpractice?

The unfortunate truth is that medical malpractice cases are rather common. However, when it comes to it, there are fine lines which need to be taken into proper consideration. Not every injury that you incur while you are undergoing treatment is going to qualify your case for medical malpractice. Sometimes, as sad as this may be, it’s just a bad outcome. You can’t expect to hold the professionals accountable every time something doesn’t go as you want it to and that’s why the law is particularly stringent in this regard.

When it’s not a medical malpractice

The case that you have would not be considered to be a medical malpractice if your condition is simply untreatable. Not all health-related issues are treatable. There is a chance that you might not be able to get better at all and the doctor who’s treating you can’t be hold accountable for this.

Another common case is when your condition gets worse during the course of treatment. There is no guarantee that every single patient is going to respond to common treatments the same way and even if the doctor does everything by the book you might still get worse – that’s still not grounds for a lawsuit.

When you can sue

In order to sue, you need to determine and define that there has been negligence involved. Negligent is the behavior which does not manifest the standard duty of care. In other terms, if your treating doctor acted in a non-efficient way whereas any other doctor with reasonable qualifications would have acted appropriately you can claim that your doctor acted negligently.

Recklessness is also not excluded. While it might be rather scarce in the medical world but it can still happen. For instance, if the surgeon who is currently operating on you is doing so under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you will most certainly be able to recover damages.

As you can see, not every single time you incur damages while in the hospital would suggest that they are due for compensation. That’s why you need to rely on a successful personal injury lawyer who is going to take care of the organization of the claim. He is going to have the necessary experience to determine whether or not your case is even qualified for compensation and you are going to come up, alongside his advice, with a proper strategy on how to proceed. With all this in mind, it’s also important to notice that medical malpractice cases are not, by all means, easy. They are particularly challenging and you would need to take into account quite a lot of things if you want to be successful.

If it is proven that you were a victim of medical malpractice, you can be compensated generously depending upon your injuries that were due to neglect or misdiagnosis. However, your injury lawyer would be the best judge of the case.

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Does Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule Handle Brain Injuries?

There are quite a few injuries that could derive from an accident, regardless of its type. While some of them are visible and easy to localize such as broken bones and tendons, for instance, others could be particularly hard to determine, let alone fix.

When your leg is broken you know it is – you are aware where the injury is and the doctors know how to handle it. The x-ray is going to show the damage and the professionals could implement the right type of treatment for you to get better. However, what happens when the only injury that you get from a recent car accident is a brain injury? You can’t just put your brain in a cast and let it heal with time.

Diagnosing Brain Injuries

The damage to your brain is impossible to see from the outside. What is worse, a brain injury might not be detected on the MRI, let alone on a regular x-ray. The truth is that brain injuries from accidents such as slip and fall, bike accidents or whatever else you might think of could have devastating effects. They might end up causing headaches, memory loss, and fogginess, anxiety, ringing in your years as well as fatigue, depression and balance problems. Sometimes, the victim himself might not even appreciate any cognitive deficit which has resulted from the injury. This is why the personal injury lawyer have to speak with his family, friends and colleagues in order to better and properly appreciate how bad or not bad at all the damage might be.

Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule

There are certain situations in which the victim has completely lost his ability to function properly. This renders the entire injury catastrophic as per the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule. Once the injury has been duly categorized and declared as catastrophic under the SABS, the compensation that the victim would be entitled to is going to be significantly greater.

However, it is absolutely paramount for you to rely on a team of skilled personal injury lawyers. In some situations he would have to conduct deep research in order to determine the exact extent of the brain injury and the precise amount of damage that it’s causing to the victim and to those around him. The truth is that brain injuries are usually hard on those who suffer from them but they could also be devastating for relatives and close friends. The reason is quite simple – it is absolutely terrible to observe the one you love and care about not being able to function properly because of some brain injury. This is capable of turning one’s entire life around and this is the reason for which brain injuries shouldn’t be taken lightly for a second, regardless of how minor they might seem.

If you or a loved one has been a victim of an accident that led to catastrophic brain injuries, it is time to contact a personal injury lawyer in Toronto.

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Are Pain and Suffering an Essential Component of Personal Injury Law?

For any personal injury lawyer and their legal teams, the concept of pain and suffering is an essential component in the cases that they represent.  Whenever someone has been injured in a motor vehicle or a slip and fall accident that occurred because of another person’s negligence, they will usually file a claim for damages in Mississauga.  If they are awarded damages (compensation), this will pay for their lost income, medical expenses, and any pain and suffering that is attributed to their injuries.

 

Furthermore, the fact that your injuries have caused you a great deal of discomfort in no way guarantees that you will be compensated for your pain and suffering.  From a legal perspective, pain and suffering is emotional as well as physical.  While certain damage claims, such as lost income or medical expenses, are easy to quantify, others are not.  Personal injury laws that apply to pain and suffering allow injury victims (plaintiffs) to receive compensation for their anguish and emotional distress.

 

How Pain differs from Suffering

 

A personal injury lawyer in Mississauga knows that there are numerous injuries that can leave a person suffering with chronic pain as well as overwhelming emotional stress.  From a legal perspective, pain and suffering are two different things even though it is treated as a single claim.  Pain is described as a physical sensation that you suffer with.  This includes aching muscles, sharp abdominal pains, or a throbbing knee.

 

Conversely, suffering is described as the emotional or psychological aspects that are attributed to your injuries.  For example, if you become severely depressed because of your injuries, that is considered suffering.  Suffering is attributed or connected to pain.  For instance, you could be stressed out and worried because you have been in chronic pain since your accident and medical treatment.  Interestingly enough, suffering is not always attributed to pain.  For instance, you could be traumatized by a family member dying in the same accident.

 

How do You calculate Pain and Suffering?

 

As was mentioned above, pain and suffering can be difficult for a personal injury lawyer in Mississauga to quantify or calculate because it is not a tangible entity.  So unlike lost income or medical expenses, it is somewhat vague.  Since no two personal injury cases are ever alike, the compensation awarded for a person’s pain and suffering will vary from one claim to the next.

 

You will have a greater chance of filing a successful claim for pain and suffering if your injuries are well documented and you have received proper medical care.  Additionally, your chances of being successful will improve with documents that detail your diagnoses, injuries, and medical treatments.  Be aware that Canadian citizens must also pass a verbal threshold when seeking compensation for their pain and suffering. It is best to let an expert lawyer handle the details and guide you through the complexities of legal jargon.

We proudly serve the residents in the Mississauga, Brampton and Burlington areas. If you want a personal injury lawyer that represents your best interests, we’d love to review your case and give a free consultation. Contact us today!

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Filing A Lost Wage Claim In Brampton

As unfortunate as it may be, the majority of accidents involving vehicles in the city of Brampton, Ontario, often result with some disabilities. This means that the person that had to go through them is often going to experience short or long term disability. This has a lot of harmful consequences on the mentality of the person but it will also result in a loss of income. The reason for this is that he won’t be able to provide the same amount of workforce and his income is going to be reduced respectively. Sometimes the person is not going to be able to work at all and he won’t be able to continue his job and he might be left without his salary at all. It is crucial that situations like this are not left unattended and that they are treated properly because people in position like this should be able to live the normal live that they are entitled to. This is where the legislation of Ontario allows the victim to file the so called lost wage claim.

Statutory Accident Benefits

The claim can be filed towards the auto insurance company, provided that he has an actual and legal insurance contract. Drivers who are insured are entitled to actually get Statutory Accident Benefits from the insurance companies that they have a contract with. This offers them a variety of different benefits in the event of a car accident and one of them is the income replacement benefit. The victim is going to be required to file a claim with the company. However, this claim would recover you to go through a lot of paperwork and to fill out a bunch of forms.

Before you get your hopes all up, make sure to note that you won’t be entitled to the entire amount of the income that you have lost. With this in mind, you are going to be able to get up to 70% of the weekly gross income. There is also a limit of $400 a week. Of course, the victim might have decided to purchase additional coverage which means that the limit of $400 is going to get higher, according to the additional insurance clauses.

It’s also important to note that the period during which you are going to be entitled to receiving this benefit is different. This would depend on the severity of your injuries and the possibility of you getting back your job. Generally the period is for up to 2 years, but if you had to go through incredibly serious traumatic injuries and you won’t be able to work again, this period can get beyond 2 years, depending on every case individually. It is best to hire the services of an experienced personal injury lawyer so that your case gets the right light.

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Statistics Regarding Brain Injuries In Ontario

Brain injuries are definitely amongst the most traumatic that a person can go through. At the same time as unfortunate as it may be, they are some of the most common injuries out there. The city of Burlington is located in the province of Ontario and the statistics that are going to be presented here are accounting for Burlington as well. Every single year more than 150,000 citizens of Canada are suffering from brain injuries. The last year of 2015 in Ontario alone, more than 800 children were victims of these severe injuries. However, it is important to know that there is a clear differentiation between traumatic and non traumatic brain injuries. The latter are also referred to as acquired brain injuries.

Brain injuries due to accidents

These are injuries which are the result of a non traumatic event. This means that the acquired brain injuries exclude causes like accidents or direct hits to the head and focuses on degenerative diseases such as cancer, tumors and many more. This is the main difference between both. It’s important to be aware of this fact because when it comes to proving the injury it is crucial to establish that the brain damage was a direct result of the accident and it wasn’t present before that.

If you fail to do so and it turns that it was an acquired brain injury your compensatory claim is going to get dismissed in this particular part. However, here are some facts which regard brain injuries in order to understand why they are so important to the field of personal injury.

  • Brain injuries are 10 times more common than any other spinal cord injury.
  • Canadians which were involved in an accident which caused them a brain injury have suffered from disabilities and have died more than from any other injury out there.
  • More than 12,000 brain injuries are registered in the province of Ontario every single year which lead to disabilities of all kinds.
  • More than 800 people in the province die of some sort of a brain injury every single year in Ontario.
  • It is highly likely that a female person is going to suffer from a brain injury more often than a male.
  • As every other year during 2015 as well the primary cause of a brain injury was a motor vehicle incident.

As you can see, brain injuries happen and they are incredibly relevant. This means that lawyers should be properly informed as to how to address those issues in order to provide their clients with proper legal representation. Make sure to stay updated with the statistics in order to build a stronger case in court. Hiring an experienced lawyer to work on your case ensures that you get the best legal assistance. Most of the brain injuries require specialized treatment and years of rehabilitation and that is why compensation is higher in such cases.

We proudly serve the residents in the Mississauga, Brampton and Burlington areas. If you want a personal injury lawyer that represents your best interests, we’d love to review your case and give a free consultation. Contact us today!

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