Not everyone is clapping their hands with joy over the petition to cap personal injury lawyer fees, with some readers choosing to blame insurers for the current state of affairs.
Several industry veterans have hailed the petition calling for a fee cap on personal injury lawyers as a good first step to controlling legal fees to help control spiraling claim costs. (To see the original story, '
Fee cap on PI lawyers a good start,' click
here.)
However one reader questioned the business model used by auto insurers.
“From an industry that claims it is unable to earn a profit on auto insurance after decades, any business that maintains they spend more than they take in should re-examine their business acumen or tells tall tales,” wrote The Devil’s Trumpet.
The reader went on to say that the insurance industry has been playing “the victim card using obfuscation by blaming everyone else” for years.
“Typically it's the insurance company's customer (who) gets the blame for high rates; according to the brokers, accident victims are all liars to some degree,” the reader continues. “Clearly the OTLA report is a big concern, they know it's correct and confirms what drivers already are aware of: they are being defrauded. The insurance industry has pivoted towards attacking the lawyers by saturating the malpractice media to manipulate the public.”
Another reader, Griswald G, had a similar cynical view of the industry.
“What a plan: Sell policies; only stand behind half of the contracts,” he wrote. “Limit access to lawyers for dissatisfied customers to force insurers to pay denied policies; laugh all the way to the bank with funds from millions of drivers.”
Ralph Palumbo, vice president, Ontario,
Insurance Bureau of Canada, told
Insurance Business that “one of the things I think we need to look at is what personal injury lawyers are charging.”
The amount PI lawyers charge the system was questioned by one broker, Ken MacCoy of RitePartner Financial Serivces, who stated that “charging contingency fees of up to 45 per cent on settlements is almost criminal. No wonder Ontario auto insurance rates are so high.”
