Counsel Forum Minutes of Meeting- September 28, 2007

1. Approval of Minutes – Meeting of May 25, 2007

Minutes were approved noting that Suzanne Courtlander was not in attendance at the last meeting

2. Business Arising from the Minutes

None

3. Forum Membership

Discussion on having one contact at a firm, where attendees to Forum meetings are not constant. A reminder to members to update the e-mail listing

4. FSCO Website

There was further discussion on a customized page for Counsel. Reminder that Catherine Zingg and Joseph Griffiths are contacts for this project and suggestions should be submitted to them. Some difficulties experienced with the FSCO website such as the search engines were also discussed.

5. Outreach

David advised that Elizabeth Nastasi and Jackie Laidlaw were the co-chairs for the committee and that contacts have been identified from both Counsel and Company Forum

6. Law Reform/Policy Initiatives

• Dispute Between Insurers – not much to report back on – final recommendations have been made, awaiting direction from new government on this issue
  
• Expert expenses – nothing to report back on at this time
  
• Five-year review – FSCO has started scoping for this review. There will be a mechanism for stakeholder input. Following a discussion on what role this group could play in the five year review, Catherine, Phillippa and Eric undertook to form a small a committee that could work on comments that might be submitted to FSCO eg defense medicals for insurers.
  
• SABS Representatives/licenced paralegals – not much more to report back on at this time. Reminder that FSCO rules/system in place till May 01, 2008.
  There was some discussion on what may happen during the transition period with ongoing investigations, possible dropouts between the current system and that of the law society, whether information on cease and desist orders would be shared with the law society. There was also a suggestion that there be a link on the FSCO Website to that of the new paralegal listing on the Law Society Website (David undertook to take this back to the FSCO Website Committee).

7. What’s new – recent decisions

Paper prepared by Lawrence Blackman for The Canadian Institute’s Advanced Forum on Motor Vehicle Accident Litigation was distributed. Decisions, concerns with fairness, ensuring a level playing field for both sides, what it could potentially lead to and emerging trends were also raised and discussed.

8. Definition of “Catastrophic”

– Eric Grossmann reported on a recent session entitled The Use and Abuse of the AMA Guidelines in Catastrophic Impairment Determination presented by Multi Disciplinary Assessment Centre and Zarek Taylor Grossmann Hanrahan LLP. Discussion followed on the current school of thought largely based on 1 judical decision.

9. Arbitration issues

• Consent orders – Janine provide an update including what the criteria is and process in place to improve timeliness and consistency in issuing consent orders. She spoke to concerns raised and provided clarification on practice.
  
• No show cases – there was further discussion on this issue including the need for consistency, reminder that individual facts need to be considered and that a possible way to deal with this may be through a rule or guideline in the Practice Code.
  
• Obtaining third party production orders – discussion focused on the need for consistency and streamlining of the current process.

10. DRS Status Report – Statistics and Staffing Updates
DRS staff provided statistical updates for mediation, arbitration and appeal. David Draper provided an update on the judical review chart and memo listing all updates since June 2007, including McMichael, DaRosa, Szabo, Kanareitsev, Gurney and Ms. G.

11. Future Meetings: November 30/07; January 25/08; March 28/08; May 30/08; September 26/08 and November 28/08.