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An occasional newsletter for health care providers
The Most Multicultural Country in the World Written by Juan Carranza
Canada has now become one of the most multicultural countries in the world. But as new Canadians are settling across the country, it is clear that integration has become more difficult in recent decades and recent immigrants are facing greater socio-economic barriers to integration. The language barrier has always been a difficult one to overcome. In today’s information-driven society the language barrier has gained increased significance. We can easily recognize this in the fields of health care, rehabilitation, and legal services, among others, where failure to communicate can have dire consequences. A recent example of a tragic failure to communicate was the taser-related death of a new immigrant at the Vancouver International Airport. While this incident is deeply shocking to all and would appear to be isolated, it bares many of the basic elements of misunderstanding and mistrust experienced by millions of new Canadians. Read more...
Treatment and Rehabilitation and the Duty to Mitigate
This article is adapted from a paper Mr. Doan presented at the Fall 2007 Conference of the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association.
The Mitigation Defence Under Ontario law, personal injury victims have a duty to take reasonable efforts to return to work and undergo appropriate medical treatment. This is called the duty to mitigate, and performs an important public policy function by minimizing the effects of injuries and maximizing society’s productivity.
This duty to mitigate is typically expressed this way: It is the duty of a person who has been injured to seek and undergo reasonable and appropriate medical treatment and to use reasonable efforts to return to work or to find suitable, comparative, alternative employment as soon as reasonably possible. When a person does not use reasonable efforts to fulfill this duty, the liability of the person causing the injury must be limited to the amount of damage that would have been suffered if the injured person had himself exercised the diligence required of him.
To the extent that an injured victim does not comply with treatment that would improve his function, or get back to work if he is able, he essentially contributes to his own losses. If a judge or a jury believes this is the case, the damages awarded to that person will be reduced by the amount that wouldn’t have been incurred if the person had mitigated. This reduction can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, depending on the particular facts of the case. Read the full article...
The Medical Legal Report
Requests for medical legal reports, and those reports themselves, often form the bulk of health practitioners’ relationship with their patient’s lawyer. For treating practitioners, such reports may seem tangential at best to your primary focus of maximizing the patient’s recovery. For personal injury lawyers, they are critical. They form the foundation of our client’s claims, and strong, well-written reports from treating practitioners are often the key to obtaining a satisfactory, early resolution to the client’s case.
Since resolving a claim eliminates the stress inherent in the litigation process, provides economic relief, makes resources available for treatment, and permits individuals to focus on recovery, in itself it is a known factor in improving recovery. Thus, useful, well-written medical legal reports may be more relevant to your treatment goals than they may first appear. The following are some tips, from the lawyer’s perspective, for writing a useful medical legal report. Read the full article...
Carranza Helps Win Historic Land Rights Case in Belize
In a landmark judgment, on October 18, 2007, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Belize affirmed that the Maya villages do hold collective title to their lands based on their own customary land tenure system, and ordered the government to demarcate and issue titles to the communities. He also prohibited the government from leasing, selling, or issuing concessions over those lands. In his decision, the judge invoked international law, and constitutional principles of equality and property rights.
This is the first time Maya customary rights have received legal protection in Belize, and will provide important protection to the Maya against dispossession of their traditional lands.
In addition, this decision is an important precedent, because it is the first case in any domestic court in the world that has provided an in-depth analysis of the international obligations of countries in regards to the rights of indigenous people. It is also the first decision anywhere in which a court cites the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which was just adopted this past September.
This case may appear to be completely unrelated to the main focus of Carranza on personal injury claims, but we see this work as another expression of our firm’s values and principles. In the same way that on a daily basis we work to make adjusters and insurers understand the value of our clients’ diverse backgrounds and stories in order to ensure they receive proper compensation, Moira’s work on this case sought to broaden the law to protect cultural diversity and value indigenous ways of customary self-governance.
Carranza and the Community
Our aim at Carranza is to provide support and care for others, not just our clients, but those in our various communities as well. This year alone we have donated to Mexican flood relief; Justice for MigrantWorkers; Salvaide; a local church’s project in Africa; the Cure Foundation; the Canadian Cancer Society; the Children’s Bridge foundation; a youth leadership project of the YMCA in Colombia; the Canadian Ecuadorian Foundation; Casa Maiz and the Canada Cuba Friendship Association. We have also sponsored events of the Guatemala Canadian Association; the Hispanic-Canadian Congress; Parkdale Community Legal Services;Native Earth and Casa Salvador Allende, among others.
Above, members of the Carranza Rolling Stones who got 1st and 2nd place this year in the Annual Barrie Wheel Chair Relay organized by the Canadian Paraplegic Association of Ontario.
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