One of ICBC’s biggest arguments is to point to an injury after the car accident (an “intervening event”) and suggest that most or all of your current problems are attributed to that intervening event and not the car accident.
In a situation involving an intervening event, the Court is asked to “crystal ball gaze” to determine what your likely outcome would have been in the absence of this intervening event. To the extent the intervening event aggravated or made worse your condition, you are not entitled to compensation for this aggravation.
This law generally applies even in situations where you can say that the car accident injuries made you more susceptible to further injury because generally speaking, the Courts do not accept such an argument.
Where you may fall into trouble is if you do not fully disclose the intervening event, whether in a statement provided to ICBC, at your doctor’s office or when you are testifying in a lawsuit. You can be rest assured that ICBC will get all of your clinical records from every doctor/ therapist you have seen since the car accident especially if your case becomes more than just a minor claim. Hence, the last thing you want to do is try to hide an intervening event and think that you can get away with it because ICBC is almost certain to find out.
If you are caught in a lie about your intervening event, even though the event may not have been a significant factor in your case, the lie does taint your credibility and hence, affect your overall claim. Therefore, err on the side of full disclosure versus non-disclosure.
In most situations, an intervening event will have some effect on your ICBC claim if the intervening event aggravated your ICBC injuries. You are not entitled to compensation for the aggravation. Full disclosure of the existence of the intervening event should be made to avoid any credibility issues being raised by ICBC because your failure to disclose will taint your whole case.
The other time when the pre-accident problems become an advantage for ICBC is if the pre-accident problems are ongoing at the time of the accident and some of the current problems can be attributed to those pre-accident ongoing difficulties.
