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Differences between the legal methods for handling personal injury cases in the United States, as opposed to the same sort of cases in Canada revolve around three areas. Those are the court system, the definition for partial fault and the size of the award given to accident victims. Details on each area have been offered in the following paragraphs.
Comparing the two court systems
In Canadian federal courts, there is only limited jurisdiction over personal injury cases. In the US federal courts, they handle both federal questions and something called diversity jurisdiction. A personal injury claim would get viewed as something to be reviewed under diversity jurisdiction. That would allow it to be moved from state to state. Plaintiffs and defendants like to take advantage of that provision, if it helps them to win a victory.
Lack of agreement on how to define partial fault
In Canada, the courts will listen to claims of contributory negligence. The court then decides on the extent of the negligence. The court’s ruling on the extent of the contributory negligence determines the size of the award that is recovered by the victim.
Most states in the United States are willing to hear an argument that deals with comparative negligence. If a state has pure comparative negligence, then the situation is just like the one that develops in Canadian courts. If the state has modified comparative negligence, then the size of the victim’s recovery decreases according to the extent of the fault. Furthermore, the victim gets no reward if his or her percent of fault exceeds a specific threshold level.
Differences in the size of the compensation awarded to victims
Canada has placed limits on the amount of money that any victim can get for pain and suffering. Those limits get applied in all Canadian provinces. In the United States, each state has the right to set some sort of limit, if it chooses to do so.
A few states have exercised that right. Some states have set a limit on the amount of money that an accident victim can receive for pain and suffering. Still, most states have failed to set such a limit. Hence, a number of victims have managed to receive very large awards, after having made personal injury claim.
Of the three ways that the Canadian system differs from the one in the United States, the third way has received the most criticism from personal injury lawyers in Barrie and other cities. Each of them questions the fairness of a system that seems to favor those with hard injuries over those with that suffered harm to a soft tissue. Of course, in both countries the size of the client’s award determines the size of the lawyer’s fee.