Canadian Lawyer

FEATURE community in 2016 — there's only $1 mil- lion available to somebody who is quadriple- gic when there used to be $2 million — "so, automatically, legal liability for causing an accident involving a seriously injured person goes up by that extra million dollars that's no longer available in the accident benefit claim," Merkur explains. Even though the most recent provincial budget, released in April 2019, announced the government's intention to reverse the cuts, the lower limits still apply to all cases until those changes are officially introduced. Most of these cases take three to five years to get to trial, Merkur says, so when you go back five years, it wasn't as common for larger policies, but nowadays it should be the norm. The word is out, especially since the 2016 cuts — the probability of a case going to trial is much higher. "Consumers should be told that — at a minimum — they need $2 million of cover- age to have any confidence that they have insurance protection," he says. But he notes that there doesn't seem to be "any consis- tency in terms of widespread support" for the industry to say it's the norm even though it would mean more revenue for insurers so they should theoretically have an interest in encouraging the jump. "They're all trying to compete with each other and there seems to be an implicit FOCUS ON PERSONAL INJURY understanding between insurance com- panies that the basic insurance quote will include $1 million of liability coverage so when people compare prices, they're basing it on $1 million versus $1 million. They know the consumer, generally speaking, will go for the lowest quote and not necessarily com- pare apples to apples." But, he says, whatever the reasons for keeping the status quo, the time has come for the insurance companies to come to an understanding among themselves that the norm should be a higher liability policy. The government won't change the legisla- tion, Merkur says, and even if it did, it would never jump to a $2-million minimum limit. "Nobody has even thought about the con- cept of the government shifting to a mini- mum limit that would be acceptable. That's not in the cards." It's coming up more and more because the one other issue with insurance is that, when multiple people are injured in the same acci- dent, they must share the insurance policy available to the defendant, Merkur says. The benefits limit and the dynamics associated with them being inadequate also becomes even more blatant. For example, Thomson Rogers represents some of the victims in the case of the infa- mous van attack at Yonge & Sheppard in 2018 that left 10 dead and 16 injured. Merkur says that dynamic is part of the discussion because, even if there is an insurance policy for the driver, it will have to be split among the victims. Merkur also had a recent case go to media- tion, where eight people were injured and the entire effort is "how we split up this crappy $1 million when the claim is actually worth $10 or $12 million." Accident victims are getting pennies on the dollar, he says. Furlong also notes that none of this has ever been adjusted for inflation or the increase in the cost of living, but he says that, while it's easy to talk about what things ought to look like, "to actually transition from here to there I appreciate is more complex." "Consumers . . . need $2 million of coverage to have any confidence that they have insurance protection. Darcy Merkur, Thomson Rogers 26 www.lawtimesnews.com

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