What to expect from long-term disability benefits

Posted on March 14, 2019June 14, 2024 by Walter Law Group

Suffering a serious injury or illness can be upsetting for numerous reasons. This includes the toll it can take on your ability to work and earn an income. However, there may be benefits available that can make the situation a little easier, like long-term disability.

Below, we explain a few basic aspects of long-term disability benefits and what you might expect in terms of filing a claim.

Types of insurance

There are different types of insurance when it comes to disability, including short-term and long-term disability benefits. There can also be benefits available if an injury occurred on the job.

Regarding long-term disability, there are two types of plans: group plans and individual plans. Understanding the type of coverage you have will be crucial in determining the benefits that may be available. If you are unsure of your coverage, you can talk to a lawyer.

What you may receive in benefits

Though specific benefits and calculations will depend on the type of coverage you have, generally speaking, long-term disability replaces a percentage of a person’s income for a specific amount of time.

As this article notes, most plans will cover between 60-70 percent of a person’s regular income. Benefits may last approximately two years, but they could end sooner or last longer, depending on the details of a claim.

Eligibility requirements

In order to collect long-term disability benefits, a person must meet eligibility requirements. This includes:

Having a condition that meets the insurance company’s definition of disabling
Having appropriate coverage
Being unable to work in either a specific occupation or any occupation, depending on the policy

Problems that can arise

Long-term disability benefits can be crucial to the lives of those who collect them. However, there are issues that can arise and make it difficult for a person to access these critical benefits. This can include wrongful denial of benefits and premature termination of benefits.

Should complications arise involving your long-term disability benefits, it is important that you take steps to understand your legal options. Too often, people assume they have no recourse or they hope the matter will resolve itself. However, these can prove to be costly assumptions, so it is important to discuss your case and possible remedies with your lawyer.

Slip-and-fall accidents: liability issues

Posted on November 12, 2018June 14, 2024 by Walter Law Group

Slip-and-falls are a common cause of personal injury accidents in Canada. If you are injured in a slip and fall, you may want to consider bringing an action to compensate you for your suffering.

An injured person would start a personal injury lawsuit against the owner or tenant (occupiers) of the premises where they were injured. Occupiers are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their property. They must remove or repair hazards on their property. These include:

Ice and snow
Wet surfaces
Uneven surfaces, such as bumps, cracks, potholes or gaps
Uneven, narrow or otherwise unsafe stairs
Unsteady or missing handrails
Poor lighting
Debris or other obstacles

The occupiers’ standard of care

Occupiers must meet a reasonable standard of care to protect those who enter their property. This is defined as anyone in control of the property, including the property owner, a tenant, or even a house sitter.

Occupiers can meet the required standard of care by:

Blocking access to possible hazards
Performing necessary maintenance
Performing regular inspections of their property and keeping records of the results
Posting signs to warn anyone entering the property of potential dangers
Removing dangers by cleaning up spills, snow or salting icy walkways

If an owner does not live on the property, they can still be found liable if the tenant or occupier fails to meet their duty of care.

The damages an injured person may sue for

An occupier could be found liable if a person slips or falls on their property and the occupier had not lived up to their duty of care to keep the property reasonably safe and obstacle-free. The injured person may sue for:

Pain and suffering
Medical expenses
Loss of income
Other expenses incurred as a result of the slip-and-fall

If a person slips and falls because the occupier did not remove ice from a walkway on their property, they may sue for any or all of the above damages, depending on their particular circumstances.

Establishing liability in slip-and-fall lawsuits

The court would consider several factors when determining whether an occupier is liable for the injuries suffered by the injured person. These factors include:

Was the accident reasonably foreseeable?
Did the occupier act according to acceptable standards of practice? An occupier would be expected to clear snow and ice within 12 hours after a snowfall ends
Did the occupier conduct regular inspections of their property?
How difficult would it have been to prevent the hazard from occurring?
Was a hazard allowed to exist for an unreasonable length of time?

A court will also consider whether the injured party’s own conduct contributed to the slip-and-fall injury. For example, if you ran on an icy walkway on the occupier’s property, you did not take reasonable care in the circumstances to protect yourself from being injured. This is known as contributory negligence.

If you were partially responsible for slipping and falling, you may still be entitled to damages, but they may be reduced.

Actions to take in the event of a slip-and-fall accident

If you slip and fall and think that the occupier of the place where you fell could be liable, you should try to document the conditions that led to the accident as soon as possible, including taking photographs or videos of the area. An occupier can clear ice or remove hazards very quickly after an accident has occurred.

You should also consult an experienced personal injury lawyer. They know how to investigate the accident and determine if the occupier could be found liable for your injury and build a case and to advocate strongly on your behalf in litigation.

Were you fired while you were on medical leave?

Posted on July 16, 2018June 14, 2024 by Walter Law Group

Losing a job can be one of the worst things to happen to anyone in Ontario who is fighting to recover from an illness that caused a disability. If this happened to you, it could bring about financial hardship for you and your family. The lack of income along with mounting medical bills can cause undue anxiety that might even exacerbate your poor health.

This is where LTD comes into play. If you have suffered an injury or contracted a disease that prevents you from returning to work, you might be entitled to long-term disability benefits.

An employer’s duty to accommodate

Except under limited circumstances, your employer may not terminate your employment while you are on medical leave. While sadly some employers do fire workers purely because they are unhappy that the employees take medical leave, provincial and federal human rights laws protect workers from such discrimination. No one’s disability may be the grounds for dismissal.

Exceptions

Employment laws require an employer to provide accommodation if you become disabled due to ill health or an injury. Your boss could either modify your duties in a manner that would allow you to continue working or he or she could grant you medical leave. However, if an employer can prove any of the following circumstances, it might justify dismissal:

Cost: If your employer must spend unreasonable amounts of money to bring about modifications to accommodate you, the court might agree that there was no other option than to dismiss you.
Undue hardship: If your employer claims that accommodating you during your illness will cause unreasonable hardship for the company, he or she will have to meet a high threshold to motivate such claims.
Health risk: If you have a condition that is highly contagious, your employer might use that to justify dismissal. However, granting you medical leave would prevent exposure of other employees to your illness.
Disruption: Some employers claim accommodating an employee’s ill health can hamper workflow, but proving that could be tough.
Unrelated firing: Your boss might even attempt to convince the court that your termination had nothing to do with your debilitating injury or illness.

Your rights during this trying time

If your employer fires you while you are on medical leave, you have the right to launch a complaint. The employer will then have the burden to prove the need to terminate your employment. Fighting for your rights at a time when you are also battling an illness might be overwhelming, but help is available. The support and guidance from an Ontario lawyer who has experience in dealing with both wrongful terminations and long-term disability insurance may prove to be an invaluable asset to your cause.