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Ontario has scheduled the payment of benefits, even before the occurrence of a car accident. It achieved that feat when the legislature passed the Statutory Benefits Schedule.
What is the Statutory Benefits Schedule?
It is a promise to all those involved in a car accident. Each of them will receive some monetary compensation, regardless of who might be named at fault for the same accident.
• What benefits have been scheduled for payment?
• Coverage of medical and rehabilitation expenses
• Income replacement
• Non-earner benefits for 2 years; this is provided to victims such as students, so that they do not have to halt their efforts to work towards a given diploma or a given level of skill.
• When applicable, a spouse and dependents can get death benefits. For the spouse that amounts to $25,000; for the dependents that amounts to $10,000.
• Victims with a catastrophic impairment receive up to $250 per week for a caregiver and up to $100 per week for housekeeping and home maintenance services.
What qualifies as a catastrophic impairment?
• Vision loss
• Tetraplegia
• Paraplegia
• Traumatic brain injury
• An amputation
• A pronounced mobility impairment
• An impairment of more than 55% of the victim’s body
Victims can hire a personal injury lawyer in North Bay, a professional that can try to persuade a judge and jury that a given client/accident victim has the sort of disorder that qualifies as a catastrophic impairment. While an attorney could not claim the performance of an amputation, if a client still had 2 legs and 2 arms, the same attorney might argue for the existence of a different sort of catastrophic impairment.
For instance, a lawyer’s skill might prove useful if a plaintiff wants to claim that he or she has suffered a pronounced mobility impairment. The plaintiff might work with legal counsel, in order to create list of all the times when a given limb had failed to function properly. The existence of a such a list would work to make the plaintiff’s impairment more pronounced.
In addition, such a list could be used to showcase the number of the body parts on a given client/plaintiff that had failed to function properly at a certain point in time. That could indicate the failed functioning of more than 55% of the plaintiff’s body. That would translate into an impairment of more than 55% of the victim’s body, which could be enough to qualify as a problem that belongs on a listing of catastrophic impairments.
Lawyers can also introduce expert testimony. Such testimony might be used to support a claim that the lawyer’s client had suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). A judge would have to admit that a TBI belongs on the list of the impairments that the court deems to be of a catastrophic nature.