Mr. John Cahalan:

It is all games. Let me outline the interesting aspect of medicals. First, we may receive a basic medical from a general practitioner that may state the guy is not too bad.

We get nothing else. The claimant will not attend the injuries board medical, nor will he allow our medical practitioner to examine him. An award will come out and the injuries board will come out and, very close to settlement, years down the line, we will be looking at a completely different set of facts and information that was probably available three years previously. However, what is happening is that each of those years is creating extra expenses, extra income and extra cost in respect of the claim.

Another really interesting point, from my perspective, is that the injuries board might make an assessment that a person should recover from his or her injury, let us say, within six months, and that is rejected, goes into litigation and lasts three, four or five years. The claimant is still suffering from the injury three, four or five years later, so the injury is no longer a year-old injury, but a five-year-old injury with a lot more pain and suffering. The interesting question, though, is how many of those people miraculously recover the day on which the case is settled? How many of them get physio the following day? How many of them continue their general practitioner appointments once the case is settled?