Nova Scotia’s $2,500 cap on minor auto injuries applies to Newfoundland and Labrador residents who were injured in a Newfoundland and Labrador-licensed bus that crashed while it was travelling in Nova Scotia.
The Court of Appeal of Newfoundland and Labrador thus settled a dispute arising from a conflict of law between two jurisdictions; namely, Nova Scotia had a cap on minor auto injuries at the time of the crash, while Newfoundland and Labrador did not. And so, did Nova Scotia’s cap apply to the Newfoundland and Labrador’s auto liability court award?
“Every court must assess damages, and there is no material difference between courts in Newfoundland and Labrador and courts in Nova Scotia as to how the assessments will be conducted, it is simply that the extent of the substantive right in Nova Scotia is more limited than in Newfoundland and Labrador,” the Court of Appeal found in a ruling released Monday.
“The [trial] judge failed to recognize that a limitation on the amount of a damages award is simply a limitation on a substantive right, and not a procedural law…”
In Hillyer v. Tilley, the claimants were passengers in a bus driven by Victor Hillyer and owned by Parsons and Sons Transportation Ltd. The bus collided with a bridge near Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on March 13, 2005. The claimants sought compensation for injuries they sustained in the crash.
Although the crash happened in Nova Scotia, Hillyer and the bus passengers are all Newfoundland and Labrador residents and the bus was licensed in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the claimants launched a court action against the driver and the bus company.
The court’s question was: Should the $2,500 minor injury cap in Nova Scotia, where the crash happened, apply to litigation in Newfoundland and Labrador?
The answer turned to whether Nova Scotia’s minor injury cap is a substantive law or procedural.
Initially, a trial judge found Nova Scotia’s minor injury cap was a procedural law, not a substantive one. Therefore, the courts in Newfoundland and Labrador were not obliged to follow Nova Scotia’s procedural law when calculating non-pecuniary damage awards.
The Court of Appeal in Newfoundland and Labrador reversed that decision.
“In this case, the [trial] judge ruled that the forum court determines how to assess the [claimants’] damages,” the Court of Appeal wrote in its decision. “This ruling implies that he regarded the Nova Scotia cap as a procedural rule respecting how damages would be assessed in Nova Scotia courts, and as such, it would have no application to litigation taking place in Newfoundland and Labrador.
“This was an error. The Nova Scotia cap is a substantive law that focuses on the extent of the [claimants’] rights to damages.”
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The Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal ruling goes into great detail about the difference between substantial laws — which apply across all provinces, no matter where an accident takes place — and procedural laws, which apply only to the jurisdictions where the litigation takes place.
“The availability of a damages award is the substantive right of an injured plaintiff,” the Court of Appeal of Newfoundland and Labrador ruled. “Limiting the availability of such an award to a certain amount affects the injured person’s substantive right, but it does not affect how the amount is calculated [i.e., as in procedural law].”
The appellate court goes on to explain: “The process of determining the amount of a non-pecuniary damages award in Nova Scotia is the same as it is in Newfoundland and Labrador: the difference is not in the procedure, it is in the extent of the amount that can be awarded.
“Whether the amount of a damages award is $2,500, $25,000, or $250,000, the determination still involves the application of law to established facts to determine the extent of an injured person’s right in [substantive] law.”
Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/rusak
