Defendant obligated to yield to plaintiff’s car which entered intersection ahead: B.C. case

The Supreme Court of British Columbia has recently rejected the defendant’s version of events in a personal injury case featuring a motor vehicle accident, on the basis of this version’s inconsistency with the recorded damage to the vehicle.

In Kim v. Dresser, 2021 BCSC 1032, the plaintiff and the defendant were involved in a March 2015 collision at an intersection, which was a four-way stop with stop signs visible in every direction. The plaintiff filed an action seeking compensation for numerous injuries sustained due to the accident, but the defendant denied liability.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia awarded the plaintiff total damages of $161,562, which comprised $60,000 for non-pecuniary damages, damages of $29,200 for past loss of earning capacity, $68,000 for loss of future earning capacity, $2,640 for cost of future care and $1,722 for special damages.

The defendant was found negligent and liable for the plaintiff’s injuries caused by the accident, which included soft tissue injuries to his cervical and lumbar spine and to both shoulders, headaches and sleep disturbances.

The court, accepting the plaintiff’s evidence regarding how the accident occurred, found that the plaintiff’s car was in the intersection before the defendant reached the stop sign. The court rejected the defendant’s version of events because, if the accident had happened as she described, the damage to the vehicle she was driving would be on the mid or back side, not on the front bumper.

The court ruled that the defendant had a duty of care to comply with ss. 173, 175 and 186 of the Motor Vehicle Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 318, as well as a common law duty of care to stop at the intersection and to only proceed into the intersection if there was no vehicle that had entered before her. From the moment that the plaintiff’s car entered the intersection, it became an immediate hazard to the defendant to which she was obligated to yield, the court said.

The court held that the defendant had breached the duty of care and had been 100 per cent at fault for the accident when she failed to yield to the plaintiff, when she failed to come to complete stop and to enter the intersection after the plaintiff had entered and when she failed to stop her vehicle before it collided with the plaintiff’s. The court declined to find contributory fault on the plaintiff’s part.

Holness and Small Law Group Professional Law Corporation called attention to Renn Holness’s second trial win against the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia in just under a week. Renn Holness, who advised the plaintiff in this case, is a founding partner at the firm.

The firm’s blog post noted that the ICBC, which argued during trial that the plaintiff was at fault for the accident, rejected offers to settle the claim for less than the trial award, which were made several years ago and just before trial, and instead offered 25 per cent of the overall award.

“This is yet another example of the wasted expenses and inefficient manner in which ICBC has been operating for many years,” wrote Jaqueline Small in the blog post. “Injured claimants are being unnecessarily forced to trial by ICBC to obtain justice and fairness.”

The blog post said that the ICBC should have been restructured to correct its mismanagement and inefficient handling of claims., rather than vested with “unfettered power and control over injured claimants and their claims through No Fault Insurance (Enhanced Care).”