A few days ago we wrote about keeping track of the damage that you suffered from your 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibition for Fail. Aside from the out-of-pocket expenses to the Government and the companies profiting from the IRP scheme, you may be able to receive compensation in the future for other losses.
If, however, you have been sitting there suffering, and doing nothing about it, you may find yourself disappointed with the amount of compensation, if any, that you receive. Simply put, you have an obligation to mitigate your losses. You need to try to reduce the losses in whatever reasonable way that you can bearing in mind your circumstances.
Consideration of mitigating steps is a normal part of calculating damages. Your home insurance may have coverage if a pipe breaks, but if you fail to turn off the main valve when water from a burst pipe is destroying your home, and if you fail to try to clean it up, the insurance company can point to you as a contributing factor to the loss. If you fail to mitigate, you can expect to have any award cut back in some way or another.
At paragraph 22 in the December 23, 2011 Sivia ruling the Court gave a warning:
In suspending this declaration of invalidity it is not my intention that the fact of the suspension itself will affect any rights that may have accrued or vested up to the present date.
You might have got stuck on the first part of that sentence, i.e. that the ruling will not affect your right to a remedy (if one exists). Important, however, is the second part: “rights that may have accrued or vested up to the present date.”
This can be read to mean that, now that you can get the Responsible Driver Program and Interlock suspended pending the outcome of the lead cases, you better not sit at home and pout about not having your license. If you do, you can forget about compensation covering the period from perhaps mid-January.
We do not know when the matter will ultimately be resolved. We do know that it will go before the BC Court of Appeal and that may take several months or more than a year.
To our surprise, a number of people are still without a drivers license because of the Interlock and Responsible Drivers Program. As we have said before, there is no reason to not have your license back. Which means, if you decide to wait for the matters to be resolved in court, there is likely no compensation for the months you suffered without a license since the start of the year when it became relatively easy for your lawyer to get your BCDL back for you. You have a duty to mitigate your losses.
If you are still without a license due to a 90-day IRP for Fail, call us and we will get you back on the road within a few days.