What is the impact of subrogated interests on personal injury and property damage claims?

A great deal of the litigation concerning personal injury and property damage is either prosecuted or defended by subrogated interests. The plaintiff will be the party who suffered the loss, but not infrequently that plaintiff will have been paid his loss by his own insurer, and the real driving force behind the litigation is the insurer. Likewise the defendant is often the person who actually caused the damage, but the defence is actually being mounted by a liability insurer that has agreed to indemnify the defendant for any legal liability he may have incurred. In civil claims the fact that there is a subrogated party does not change legal liability; the court will determine issues of liability the same way whether one or both or neither of the parties are insured: Ratych v. Bloomer, 1990 CanLII 97 (SCC), [1990] 1 S.C.R. 940, 69 D.L.R. (4th) 25, 107 N.R. 335. The insurers are said to “stand in the shoes” of their insureds. Because insurance does not affect liability, questions about insurance are generally irrelevant.