Jury Awards Over $1.2 Million After ICBC Argued Our Client Deserves Almost Nothing

Mussio Goodman is pleased to announce our very successful 10-day jury trial where our client was ultimately awarded well over $1.2 million.

Our client was a bright young PhD student looking forward to a long and successful career in archeology. She had dreamed to become a professor at a top tier research university, and it seemed that there was nothing to stand in her way. She had graduated from both UBC and Oxford, and was just about to accept a PhD offer from a top US school when she was rear-ended by the defendant in 2019.

Due to her injuries, our client could not commence her PhD program and had all but given up hope before she finally thought she was ready to try again a couple of years later. In 2021 she started her PhD with an accommodating professor who described her as the “top 1%” of students she had ever come across. However, our client was not able to keep up with the intensely physical demands of archeology work, and quickly started falling behind. The faculty at UBC was content to let our client pace herself and extend deadlines, but it was clear she would never be a competitive candidate for a highly sought after professorship. At best, she might go on to be a part time college teacher or lab tech.

Because our client was always honest with her doctors, she reported to her GP when she was feeling some improvement. Despite the medical experts agreeing that our client had been seriously injured, ICBC focused their submissions at trial on the few records that showed improvement, and made every effort to make our client look like a liar.  ICBC argued that our client quickly improved after the accident but then somehow must have been injured later – all without any evidence. ICBC submitted that the jury should award our client a few thousand dollars to cover some physio.

The jury however, made up of eight people selected from a cross section of society, sided with the overwhelming evidence in favour of our client.

Congratulations to our client who refused to back down and fought for her day in Court. We are immensely proud of her fortitude, the jury’s keen sense of fairness, as well as the results we achieved on our client’s behalf.