What is the test for rejecting an offer of $1 to settle a personal injury claim?

British Columbia, Canada


The following excerpt is from Haigh v. Kent, 2013 BCSC 298 (CanLII):

In their submissions, the Kents cite Brooks-Martin v. Martin, 2011 BCSC 497 para. 38, for the proposition that “an offer may be safely ignored if the questions to be answered at trial are questions about which reasonable lawyers could disagree.” In that case, the particulars of the plaintiff’s negligence claim were characterized by the trial judge as having been “in a state of flux up until the time of trial”; this appears to have been the basis for Halfyard J.’s statement that “[t]he strength of the plaintiff’s case ... and the likelihood of a trial judge finding some liability ... were, in my opinion, questions about which reasonable lawyers could disagree”, and his conclusion that the defendant’s offer to settle for the sum of one dollar, delivered on the eve of trial, might reasonably have been seen as falling short of providing “a genuine incentive to settle”.

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