Law Times

Law Times • June 15, 2015 Page 13 www.lawtimesnews.com Insurance legislation Personal injury firms thriving despite constant change By Michael Mckiernan For Law Times lipping through the drawers of his office re- cently, Alf Kwinter came across a few relics from one of the biggest fights of his battle-scarred career. A stack of buttons printed with the message "No Fault. No Thanks" transported the co-founder of Toronto personal injury boutique Singer Kwinter back to 1990 when the slogan was the rallying call of oppo- nents to Ontario's Bill 68 that introduced no-fault insurance to the province. The sight of them now raises a chuckle, says Kwinter, but at the time the atmosphere in the plaintiff personal injury bar was apocalyptic. "I actually know people who left the jurisdiction and moved their entire firm to B.C.," says Kwinter, who's now into his fifth decade of practice. "We were told it was all over." When Bill 68 passed, Kwinter himself half expected to return to criminal law, an area that had formed the backbone of his practice for the first decade after his call to the bar in 1972 before he made the switch to personal injury law. But 25 years on, after a multitude of major and minor revamps to the system, the firm persists. Kwinter says he sees parallels between the no-fault crisis and the current climate in the per- sonal injury bar where sustained accident-benefit cuts have raised fears about the long-term viabil- ity of personal injury practices. But Kwinter says the memories of past battles give him some comfort. "I have a lot of confidence in the plaintiffs' bar. We've always managed to be creative and imaginative enough to stay in business," he says. "For the last 25 years, the gov- ernment has attempted to take away victims' rights and they continue to do so. But no mat- ter what they have tried, we're always a step or two ahead of them." A number of measures un- veiled in the latest provincial budget in April earned the wrath of personal injury law- yers, including: • cut to the combined ben- efits for attendant care and medical and rehabilitation services for catastrophically injured victims to $1 million from $2 million. • cut to the combined benefits for attendant care and medi- cal and rehabilitation servic- es for non-catastrophically injured victims to $65,000 from $86,000. • two-year limit on non-earner benefits that were previously available following a six- month waiting period until claimants turned 65 and on a reduced basis after that point. • reduction in the standard duration for medical and re- habilitation benefits to five years from 10 years except for children. • promise to amend the defini- tion of catastrophic impair- ment in line with updated medical information and knowledge, a plan viewed ominously by many plaintiff- side lawyers who expect the new definition to be more restrictive. The Ontario Trial Lawyers Association condemned the proposals with former presi- dent Steve Rastin calling for an immediate moratorium on any changes pending consultations with stakeholders in the auto in- surance sector. "The changes announced yesterday are too sweeping and would impose too high a burden on injured accident vic- tims, all to the net benefit of the insurance industry," said Rastin in a statement on April 24, the day after the budget. "We think it's possible to meet the rate reduction objec- tives set out in the budget with- out reducing coverage for the most seriously injured accident victims." John McLeish, a founding partner of Toronto personal in- jury firm McLeish Orlando LLP, says the budget proposals "make me angry." "As someone who has spent most of my professional life rep- resenting injured individuals, I think it's a very mean-spirited piece of legislation," he says, not- ing he finds the cuts to coverage for catastrophically impaired people particularly disturbing. "These are drastic reductions in benefits to the people who need them most," says McLeish. He expects the Ontario Health Insurance Plan will end up picking up the slack in the long run. "Catastrophically injured individuals are going to get a settlement that won't be nearly enough," says McLeish. "They're going to have to use the settlement money to survive and get the rehabilitation they need and they're going to run out. Then they're going to be left trying to make do with what they can get through OHIP and, at the end of the day, it's going to be on the backs of the taxpayers who pay for it." Wendy Moore Mandel, a partner at Toronto personal in- jury boutique Thomson Rogers, says the budget measures are just the latest in a long line of ef- forts to keep politically sensitive insurance premiums in check. The pace has accelerated in re- cent times since Ontario's Lib- eral government pledged to cut insurance rates by an average of 15 per cent over two years by August 2015. CANADA & USA 1.800.265.8381 | EMAIL info@mckellar.com | www.mckellar.com The reason why we are Canada's largest and most comprehensive structured settlement firm has everything to do with our passion for service and performance— without exaggeration, we make life easier for you. The largest Swiss Army knife has 85 tools that can perform 141 tasks. Almost as helpful as McKellar. Untitled-8 1 14-08-26 4:06 PM BRIEF: PERSONAL INJURY BOUTIQUES F With cutbacks to accident benefits, Wendy Moore Mandel predicts more intense and complex litigation in the future. See Continual, page 14

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