Ever wonder why your insurance premiums are so high? It could have something to do with the fact that your fellow drivers like to defraud the system by claiming soft tissue injuries and then go rock climbing and sky diving. In Vancouver a number of scammers were busted by the social networking website Facebook, when ICBC, the public insurance corporation in British Columbia, visited the pages of the claimants and found them enjoying their favourite activities. The kind of activities they said they couldn’t enjoy owing to the nature of their car accidents:
Photos of Mirae Mayenburg hiking and cycling were entered as evidence in her court case against the Insurance Corp. of B.C.
Mayenburg, 23, said the 2006 accident left her with soft-tissue injuries that caused her to quit her cashier job at Canadian Tire and interfered with her schooling at Douglas College and Simon Fraser University.
The injuries also prevented her from hiking, cycling and dancing, she said.
But ICBC lawyers disagreed, citing her Facebook photos.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elliott Myers, who awarded Mayenburg more than $50,000 in damages, ruled that her injuries had a minimal effect on her lifestyle or her ability to carry on with the activities that she previously enjoyed, but did affect her quality of life.
I find the most amusing part is that she was caught red-handed abusing the system, but the judge still awarded in her favour for “her quality of life”. She couldn’t work as a cashier at Canadian Tire anymore? I wonder whether she could have continued to work at her job if it paid more than $10 an hour.
The article goes on to mention another woman white-water rafting after her car crash gave her a back-injury. Why is it that this whole episode reminds me a lot of this lovable weasel?
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