In the Supreme Court of British Columbia, there is a mechanism to encourage early settlement of all actions, including those involving motor vehicle collisions and ICBC injury claims. That mechanism is the Offer to Settle, which is a special type of offer that is governed by Rule 9-1 of the Supreme Court Civil Rules. Under the old Rules of Court, the section was Rule 37, Rule 37A or Rule 37B, as it changed over time.
Rule 9-1 essentially says that there are consequences in the form of Court Costs for a party should they no accept a reasonable offer and force unnecessary steps in a court action, such as proceeding to trial and receiving a judgment that is less than what the Offer to Settle was for. That is what happened in a recent case ( link ).
The summary of the result at trial in the case was that the Court awarded the plaintiff $433,103.63, but the defendant, prior to the trial, had offered to settle for $493,234 and $595,000. The amount awarded by the judge after trial, of course, was less than the amounts the defendant was willing to offer.
Each stage in a court proceeding is allocated a fixed number of units, or a range of possible units. Each unit, for cases of ordinary difficulty is worth $110 plus H.S.T. These units are what is referred to as "Court Costs". Court Costs are intended to offset some of the expense of proceeding through a court action. However, if a party does not accept a reasonable offer, and forces unnecessary steps to be taken, Court Costs can act as a penalty.
The purposes of Court Costs have been said to be:
(1) to indemnify a succesful litigant
(2) to deter frivolous actions or defences
(3) to encourage conduct that reduces the duration and expense of litigation and to discourage conduct that has the opposite effect
(4) to encourage litigants to settle whenever possible, thus freeing up judicial resources for other cases
(5) to require litigants to make a careful assessment of the strength or lack thereof of their cases at the commencement and throughout the course of litigation,
(6) and to discourage the continuance of doubtful cases or defences.
The old Rule 37B used to have mandatory consequences in the event that a formal offer was not accepted and the result at trial was less favourable than the offer. Rule 9-1 now gives much the Court broad discretion to determine the consequences of a succesful offer to settle.
The possibilities are broad ranging from awards of double costs to no costs to costs after a certain date to penalties of double costs.
The discretion afforded to the Court in deciding what result in terms of Costs Consequences will be appropriate in the circumstances will likely lead to better equities and justice, but it also breeds uncertainty. The Vancouver personal injury lawyers at Becker Lavin & Wessler can guide you through this confusing area as well as all other aspects of your ICBC injury claim.
