Driver claims texting, not drinking, caused accident

A Kamloops, B.C., woman who allegedly gave conflicting accounts of how she came to leave the roadway in a single vehicle accident and crash into a hydro pole has decided to go with the lesser of two evils in her lawsuit against an insurance company.

She was texting in the lead-up to the accident, she now claims, not drinking, as she allegedly previously said.

“At the time, she evidently gave two different versions of what happened leading to the accident. The one she stands by is that she was texting,” a judge writes in a new ruling.

It is an unusual legal strategy, as both are clearly against the law, although only drunk driving is a crime. Both are also widely regarded as reckless and dangerous, but only drunk driving would clearly void the insurance policy for her 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe.

It is not really a defence, because Angela Seeley is the one who launched this lawsuit for the maximum $25,000 in small claims court in 2016, after the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia “refused or neglected to honour her policy for insurance,” according to her lawsuit.

But her own alleged admissions have put her on the back foot.

The Crown corporation admits she was insured, but claims in reply that she has admitted fault for the accident. Not only that, it claims she was “under the influence of intoxicating liquor or a drug” to the extent that she could not properly control the vehicle, and that she made a “wilfully false statement with respect to her claim.”

They claim she denied having had anything to drink before the accident, and that this appears to conflict with information gathered by the ambulance crew that tended to her.

The ICBC also counterclaimed more than $6,000 for the cost of repairing an electricity pole, according to court records.

In the March 16 ruling, the judge ordered Seeley to divulge evidence showing her weight on the day of the accident, and a chronological account of what she ate that day, so that a blood analyst hired by the insurer can make an expert report in advance of Seeley’s cross-examination at trial.

Judge S.D. Frame also ordered her to hand over her cellphone records for the day, or at least evidence that her provider Telus cannot provide them, so that lawyers for ICBC can check her texting claim.

The judge refused, however, to compel evidence from the ambulance crew who checked her out.

The case is a rare illustration of the differences between a criminal court drunk driving trial, which must be decided beyond a reasonable doubt, and small claims court actions that involve claims of drunk driving, which can be decided on a balance of probabilities.

In small claims court, procedural efficiency is the name of the game. These cases are not supposed to drag on or get too complicated, and the rules are set for the judge to seek a “just, speedy and inexpensive resolution.”

That is why Seeley has been ordered to divulge her weight and what she ate. Otherwise, the ICBC lawyer would have to ask her this on the witness stand, then adjourn the trial so their expert could work it into a report. The judge found this too inefficient.

But forcing the ambulance crew into the witness box, over their initial objection, “would be neither speedy, inexpensive or simple,” the judge found.

ICBC is currently facing massive financial pressures, so much that the government is considering caps on claims.

BOTH ARE CLEARLY AGAINST THE LAW, ALTHOUGH ONLY DRUNK DRIVING IS A CRIME.