ICBC Policy of Ignoring Friends and Family Witnesses Rejected by Civil Resolution Tribunal

ICBC has a terrible habit of ignoring evidence from friends and family members of crash victims.  If you are involved in a crash ICBC may tell you that your passengers (and any other friends and family members) that witnessed the crash are not true witnesses because of their relationship to you.

This is dead wrong.  Today we received reasons for judgement from the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal confirming this policy is nonsense.

Today’s case dealt with fault following a crash.  The parties gave differing accounts of how the crash happened. Worse than that the Respondent motorist asked the claimant to lie when reporting how the crash happened to ICBC to keep the Respondent out of trouble.  Despite this and despite an independent witness confirming the crash happened as the Claimant reported ICBC refused to find the Respondent fully at fault finding the witness was friends with the respondent therefore his evidence was of no value.  In rejecting this position as legal nonsense the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal published the following useful reasons that British Columbians should keep handy if faced with ICBC’s wrong policy:

“ICBC argues that no weight should be placed on AW’s evidence because of his friendship with (the claimant).  This submission apparently reflects a common ICBC practice to refuse to consider evidence from a party’s family or friends.  This does not reflect the law of evidence or the CRT’s practice which routinely weighs evidence from witnesses with relationships to a party”

The CRT went on to find the witness was reliable, that the Respondent was not, and overturned ICBC’s decision and found the Respondent fully at fault for the crash.