In the Eye of the Storm
Canadian Underwriter, Feb 2009 by Mariga, Vanessa
Geoffrey Machurn, a partner at Stewart McKelvey in Halifax, was a key figure in a big win for the insurance industry on the issue of auto insurance caps for minor injuries.
Insurers in Nova Scotia 2009 with a huge sigh of when Supreme Court of Nova Scotia Justice Walter Goodfellow upheld the constitutionality of the province’s cap on minor injuries.
Similar constitutional challenges have been launched across the country. But until January 2009, only one had entirely worked its way a court: the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in 2008 decided in Morrow ? Zhang that Alberta’s Cdn$4,000 cap on minor soft tissue injuries was unconstitutional. Alberta of Queen’s Bench Justice Neil Wittmann ruled that the cap Alberta discriminated against soft-tissue injury victims, and decision is now under appeal.
To some, Goodf el low’s decision in Hartling ? Nova Scotia et al. might be viewed as evening the score in a national battle between insurers and trial lawyers over the legitimacy of capping auto insurance claims payments to people who suffer minor injuries. Insurers say the caps are necessary to stem the tide of rising premiums and claims costs. Trial lawyers say the caps limit the tort rights of their clients (minor injury claimants).
One of the lawyers in the centre of the maelstrom is Geoffrey Machum, a partner at Stewart McKelvey in Halifax. He represented Aviva Canada, one of the insurers, in the landmark Hartling case.
Machum has practiced law since 1985. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he cut his teeth on Coughlan et al v. Westminer Canada Ltd., a sixyear-long case that involved the take-over of a Nova Scotia mining company by an Australian mining company.
Machum’s involvement in Coughlan essentially led to his making partner at Stewart McKelvey. In 2003, he earned the appointment of Queen’s Counsel by the ripe age of 43. (A ‘Q.C designation goes to select lawyers who have had at least 10 years of professional experience.)
Although his portfolio includes an array of commercial cases, Machum elected to focus on insurance after teaching insurance law at Dalhousie University for three years in the 1990s. “When you go to law school, not a lot of people are sitting there saying: ‘When I graduate, I want to become an insurance law practitioner,’” he says
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