How a good Occupational Therapist can help your ICBC claim.

 

A solid expert report from an occupational therapist can be an essential part of a personal injury claim. Occupational Therapists (OTs) are professionals registered with the College of Occupational Therapists of British Columbia:

http://cotbc.org/

OTs are often used by personal injury lawyers to provide expert reports that speak to Future Wage Losses and Future Costs of Care. These heads of damage are difficult for the courts to quantify, as doing so requires an attempt to predict the future. One way to provide evidence towards potential future events is to have an expert provide their opinion on what types of jobs a plaintiff may not be capable of doing and what kind of care they may need. An OT will typically put a plaintiff through rigorous testing to test their potential limits in the work place. The OT will then use that data to provide their opinion on what kinds of jobs a plaintiff would be unable to do and what kind of treatment they might need to treat those injuries.

This can be especially crucial to a personal injury case as future losses can compose the largest part of a claim. Claims for pain and suffering are limited to just over $300,000, but there is no limit on future losses.

In a recent Supreme Court of British Columbia case, a plaintiff was awarded over $200,000 for future wage losses:

http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2015/2015bcsc1114/2015bcsc1114.html?

Without the use of a qualified and experienced OT, it is not likely he would have been given this award.

Experienced counsel will not only be able to refer you to an appropriate OT but can help you fund their reports as well. OT reports are typically lengthy and require a day or more of testing. As a result, although often essential to a claim, they are not cheap.

 

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