ICBC Expert Witness Rejected Due to “Selective View of the Facts”

Reasons for judgement were published today by the BC Supreme Court, Vancouver Registry, assessing damages for a Plaintiff’s injuries and rejecting expert evidence retained by ICBC.

In today’s case (Wong v. Draaistra) the Plaintiff was injured in two separate collisions.  Fault was admitted by the Defendants for the crashes.  In addition to physical injuries the Plaintiff developed “psychiatric or emotional problems that have likely increased and prolonged her physical pain, and have caused her life to shrink to near-isolation in an unmaintained home behind almost permanently closed blinds“.

The Defendants hired an expert who provided opinion evidence blaming the Plaintiff’s psychiatric conditions on factors other than the collision.  The court rejected this opinion finding it was based on “a selective view of the facts“.  In rejecting the defence expert The Honourable Associate Chief Justice H. Holmes provided the following comments:

[25]        Dr. Solomons’ opinion went to the heart of the matter in dispute, but I am unable to accept it.  Dr. Solomons did not take account of various references in the medical records that associated Ms. Wong’s post-collision pain with her depression and emotional issues.  These included even the initial referral to psychiatry in 2014, which was for depression and emotional issues associated with chronic pain from the collisions.  Dr. Solomons could not explain why he overlooked these references, or why he emphasized family-related stressors in the history instead.  The unexplained omissions leave me unable to rely on Dr. Solomons’ opinion because the opinion appears to be based on a selective view of the facts.