In many personal injury cases there are several claims being made and some of these claims may not be successful at trial. How do you know when you have achieved substantial success? This is important when deciding on entitlement to legal costs and disbursements. Your substantial success will help determine the amount of money you get for costs in a supreme court civil case.
It is well-established that winning “substantial success” does not require success on all issues:
[8] The question of success in this case is not absolute, and the question for us is whether either party achieved substantial success when considering the appeal overall. An apportionment of costs on an issue by issue basis is not the regular practice, nor is counting the number of issues on which success was achieved…( Stein v. Stein, 2007 BCCA 187, 68 B.C.L.R. (4th) 104)
In determining “substantial success”, the court does not make a mathematical comparison of the amount claimed to the amount awarded. To determining the winning party in a personal injury case the Court must take into account a myriad considerations in assessing whether there has been substantial success. The exercise of court discretion requires the judge to look at the case as a whole and craft a result that achieves a measure of fairness.
Watch out short video to learn more about getting the highest award in a personal injury case.