Legal Research

Craig Brown on the Apology Act

By Omar Ha-Redeye

I’ve covered the Apology Act on Slaw before, and Dan Pinnington has touched on the implication for insurers.

One of my professors at UWO, Dr. Craig Brown, has taken it a step further, and suggests it may even assist insurers.  Dr. Brown is the author of Insurance Law in Canada, probably the foremost work in this area.

In a recent article in The Lawyers Weekly he states,

…apologies will likely benefit defendants and their insurers by reducing both the damages payable and the costs of reaching a settlement.

The legislation encourages interaction between the parties to a dispute at a non-legal level, allowing for the possibility of a healing process often denied by the adversarial nature of the litigation process. In other words, the Act provides for a form of restorative justice.

To facilitate this restorative justice, I would suggest that litigators utilize more communication professionals in their practice, especially as it relates to public apologies.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).