Every year in Ontario, people who are seriously injured in car accidents and then find themselves hit twice.
They turn to personal injury lawyers for help, and get hit again when they lose outrageous amounts of their settlement to legal fees. Sometimes more than half!
This is money meant for victims to recover, move on with their lives, and provide their families with some security.
Bill 103: the Personal Injury and Accident Victims Protection Act, aims to place a reasonable cap on contingency fees so that victims recovery comes ahead of lawyers' bottom lines.
Every year in Ontario, people injured in car accidents turn to personal injury lawyers to help them get the money they need to recover. Lawyers often take these cases on a contingency basis, taking their fees from a portion of the settlement (the “you don’t pay unless we win” model).
Contingency fees can provide access to justice to those who would not otherwise be able to retain a lawyer. However, far too often, personal injury lawyers are taking significant percentages of victims’ settlement money – in some cases as much as 40 percent. In fact, every year in Ontario, personal injury lawyers collect nearly $500 million in contingency fees. This is money that is intended to help victims with their recovery, and provide some measure of security for victims and their families.
Other provinces in Canada have established reasonable limits on how much a personal injury lawyer can take from a client’s settlement. Ontario has no such rules in place. People in Ontario deserve better protection to ensure they are protected from being Hit Twice.
We the undersigned petition the legislative assembly of Ontario as follows: support Bill 103, The Personal Injury and Accident Victims Protection Act, 2017; and take action and conduct a full study, to be publicly released by December 31, 2017, into the use of contingency fees in personal injury litigation and the impact they have on victims.
