If you suffer a personal injury in a car accident in British Columbia, you will advance your injury claim in a tort-style system.

When you breach a legal duty that results in harm, you commit a tort. The person who is harmed is then entitled to a remedy – most often money. For example, driving through a red light and crashing into another car and injuring the driver of the other car is a tort.

In legal language, damages means money and vice versa.

Just because BC’s tort system awards money for personal injury doesn’t mean the BC government believes money replaces one’s harms and losses. Instead, money is a best effort to compensate what is lost as a result of personal injury.

Some jurisdictions (i.e. a province or state or country) have moved to a no-fault system for compensation. A tort system is adversarial; the victim sues and claims money (i.e. damages) from the person who did the wrong. In a no-fault system, typically the victim does not go after the wrongdoer; instead the victim is compensated via a legislated scheme.

Naturally there are strong proponents of the tort system and strong proponents of the no-fault system. Presently, there are more tort jurisdictions in the North America; however no-fault is a prominent system. The only real downside to a tort system is in some cases an injured person who fails to prove injuries is not compensated. The same can happen in a no-fault system. The only real difference is if in a tort system the injured person loses their case, that person may have to pay the costs of the other side. Typically such a penalty doesn’t exist in a no-fault system.

The advantage to the no-fault system is some people claim a no-fault system is more efficient because it’s not lawsuit oriented. However, victims are typically not nearly as well compensated. Also, injured people in a no-fault system can have their claims wrongfully denied resulting in under-compensated incidents.

In response to the efficiency argument in a no-fault system, it’s important to know that most personal injury cases in a tort system resolve well before a lawsuit ramps up. This means most cases resolve before there is a large expense in the system.

The fact that in a tort system there is final recourse in a court means that wrongdoers will pay more than most no-fault schemes provide. The court as final resort maintains the tort system and is in fact overall efficient and injured people are better compensated for their injuries.

It’s instructive to know that insurance companies want no-fault schemes. Given that insurance companies most often pay out tort claims, it seems clear that in the end less compensation is paid out in a no-fault scheme than a tort system. Essentially, no-fault systems put the insurance companies in the driver seat; whereas the tort system puts the injured victim in the driver seat.

Looking to learn more about personal injury lawyers, then visit Dykstra & Company’s website to find plenty of information on ICBC claims.