Ideally, the benefits requested by the victim of a car accident should aid the achievement of three goals: easing financial burden of recovery process; supplementing victim’s income; and paying, if necessary, for attendant care. The insurance company can approve of or deny any such request. In the past, the victim that had been denied a request did not feel like he or she had arrived at dead end.
Possibilities remaining open to victims in the past
Appeal for review of request using mediation procedure. Denied victim had two options.
One option consisted of applying for arbitration.
The second option entailed suing the responsible party.
Today, drivers in some parts of the Ontario have only a single option, if their request for benefits has been denied. That single option eliminates all three of the possibilities in the above list. One special group has replaced all three of them. It is called an Appeal Tribunal.
The Tribunal focuses on the victim’s treatment plan, noting how well it matches with the submitted request. If the Tribunal’s review leads to approval of that plan, the victim can feel assured of the desired benefits. On the other hand, if the plan gets rejected, the victim must redesign the plan, in order to appeal the decision.
Furthermore, the group that studies the revised plan is the Appeal Tribunal, the same group that looked at the original plan. If the revised plan gets rejected, the victim’s only alternative consists of putting together yet another treatment plan, and then seeking the Tribunal’s approval of that third proposed treatment procedure.
In other words, the victim can get caught in a vicious cycle. Some victims might feel willing to keep submitting revised procedures. Others might simply give up. All the while the victim’s medical bills will keep piling up and the recovering victim will have no source of income. The only group that benefits is the insurance industry, which has no trouble waiting for a final decision.
That is why personal injury lawyers in Brampton do not welcome the introduction of this alternate means for addressing victims’ requests. Fortunately, this newly introduced system has not yet drawn lots of backing. It has not been adopted by a widespread group of communities. Lawyers probably hope that it will remain a system that gets used on a small scale.
The danger in utilization of such a system
This alternate system favors those that can afford to wait for a decision. Some victims do have money that can be used to pay the providers of services. Of course, no all victims are so lucky.Unlike the traditional way of dealing with appeals, this new system makes it even harder for a victim to hasten a return to his or her former lifestyle. A family with limited means will get forced to deal with an even tighter budget. In other words, the victim has even less chance for witnessing the return of his or her former level of prosperity.
Another way this system differs from the traditional concerns the victim’s chances for anticipating problems in the future. Now, a victim can refuse a settlement amount, in order to leave the door open for any liability charges in the future. Such charges cannot be made to an Appeal Tribunal. That fact underlines another of the reasons that a typical attorney finds this alternate appeal method so objectionable.
