This case surrounds an impaired driving crash in Kingston Ontario. Late at night, a vehicle, driven by a 21 year old was speeding, left the roadway and ran into a house.
Some of the passengers were seriously injured.
One of the injured passengers sought counsel from us. They wanted to determine whether a claim could be pursued to assist with the cost of:
- medical treatments
- rehabilitation expenses
- loss of income while absent from his job
Legal Issues In Impaired Driving Crash Kingston Ontario Car Accident Claim
Accident Benefits After a Kingston Car Accident
To address our clients’ needs for medical rehabilitation, we ensured the could access accident benefits coverage. We check with every automobile collision.
Accident benefits are accessed through an injured persons own automobile policy. It covers reasonable costs associated with medical and rehabilitation treatments throughout the recovery process.
We also looked into income benefits available to our client. We looked into this in case our client was unable to return to work.
These benefits are accessed by submitting an application.
In this case, our client was deemed to be eligible for :
- Rehabilitation coverage for 5 years from date of collision
- Income replacement for weeks our client could not work
When clients do not have access to automobile insurance, we submit the applications to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. When the at-fault driver doesn’t have an automobile policy, we submit the application to Motor Vehicle Accident Claims Fund .
Tort Claim Against the At-Fault Driver in Kingston, Ontario
We also explored whether a tort claim against the at-fault driver was possible.
In this case, we recommended that our client advance a claim.
This being said, there were some challenges that we had to face:
- Standard auto policies have a strict zero alcohol requirement for drivers who are 21 years old or less in Ontario. In this case, the driver was 21 and impaired.
- This restricted his available coverage.
- The defendant driver’s limited available policy limits were capped at a certain amount.
- Each injured person was restricted to accessing this limited coverage on a pro rated base.
We accessed additional coverage for our clients through the OPCF 44 R provisions of our client’s automobile policy. This was available through our own client’s automobile policy when an underinsured driver responsible for the injuries sustained.
With the number of claimants and the severity of the injuries sustained, the defendant driver’s limited insurance created an underinsured situation. This allowed our client to add his own automobile insurer to the claim under the OPCF 44 R provisions of his automobile policy.
We also had to determine whether our client caused their injured and if they knew the driver was impaired.
Results of Kingston Personal Injury Claim
This case was ultimately resolved to the benefit of our client.
The available medical rehabilitation coverage through his own accident benefits assisted our client immediately in his pursuit of maximizing his recovery. The available income replacement benefits also helped to at least partially offset his loss of income during that period of time when he was unable to work.
With respect to the tort claim, being in a position to add our own client’s automobile insurer to the claim in a timely fashion had a necessary and positive impact on the resolution of the matter.
