First the good news: Nova Scotia’s car insurance companies
are making bags of money thanks to provincial Tories and Liberals. Now
the not-so-good news: Nova Scotia drivers are paying hundreds of
millions too much for coverage that sucks. Just ask Melissa Gionet.
After her car got sideswiped in December 2003, Gionet suffered a
banged-up knee as well as excruciating lower back pain. She missed two
months of work as a cashier at the Casino where she was required to
lift heavy bags of coins. When she did return to work, she could manage
only a couple of shifts a week until she found a new, less-taxing job.
Meantime, Gionet was having problems at home. “I can’t bath my own
daughter,” she told me in June 2005. “I can’t even play with her
because I can’t sit on the floor for more than five minutes without my
back killing me.”
Earlier this month, an unsympathetic Nova Scotia judge ruled, in
effect, that the measly $3,100 payout Gionet received from her
insurance company was just fine by him. That money covered lost wages
as well as compensation for the lower back pain she still suffers.
Supreme Court justice Walter Goodfellow ruled that Nova Scotia’s $2,500
cap on payments for pain and suffering does not discriminate against
accident victims with so-called “minor” injuries. Nova Scotia’s
Conservative government imposed the cap with Liberal support in 2003
after the insurance industry waged an extensive PR campaign blaming
people suffering from “soft tissue” injuries for causing huge increases
in insurance premiums. Industry propaganda also suggested that many
accident victims were faking their injuries. Goodfellow, one-time
president of the provincial Conservatives, rejected arguments that
industry propaganda and the Tory legislation that followed stigmatized
victims. Instead he bought the claim that capping payments for pain and
suffering significantly lowered premiums, making auto insurance
affordable for the young, the old, single parents and the poor.
Gionet’s lawyer, Barry Mason, points to expert testimony, however,
showing that insurance premiums actually fell by much less than the 20
percent required under the 2003 legislation. In fact, Mason says that
since the payout cap was imposed, Nova Scotia car insurance premiums
have fallen only eight-and-a-half percent while the insurance companies
have reaped up to $250 million in extra profits. And no wonder. The
definition of “minor injury” is so broad, it can be applied to almost
any accident victim. As I wrote in 2005, if a victim suffers chronic
pain that requires ongoing medical attention and daily medication,
that’s only a minor injury even if she has to move to a ground-floor
apartment because she can no longer climb stairs. And all psychological
injuries such as depression, insomnia, sexual dysfunction or
post-traumatic stress disorder are now also classified as minor. Worst
of all, the 2003 law puts the onus on victims to prove that their
injuries are not minor. In other words, when your insurance company
claims you have minor injuries and hands you a cheque for $2,500 or
less, you have to prove in court that you’re suffering from “a
permanent serious impairment of an important bodily function caused by
a continuing injury which is physical in nature.” Good luck! It will be
you and your bank account up against companies that can afford to hire
all the fancy lawyers and medical experts they want.
There is still hope, however. Mason is appealing Goodfellow’s
decision to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal. Meantime, a judge in
Calgary ruled last year in a similar case that Alberta’s $4,000 cap on
compensation for soft tissue injuries did violate accident victims’
rights. Judge Neil Wittmann also ruled that insurance company
propaganda unfairly stigmatized accident victims as fakers and
fraudsters. Shamefully, the Tories in Alberta are appealing his
ruling—a good example of friendly fascism, the system under which
governments side with big companies against the rest of us.
Correction: Last week we misspelled letter writer Julie
Glaser’s name. Our apologies.
Do you have an insurance horror story? Let Bruce Wark
know at brucew@thecoast.ca.
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This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2009.