General Damages for Chronic Pain in Atlantic Canada

General damages for chronic pain are argued in more Atlantic Canada injury files than any other category, because pain that outlasts the tissue damage is the ordinary outcome of a moderate collision. The defence position is almost always the same: the scans are clean, so the pain is exaggerated. Canadian law rejects the premise. This chapter states why, and the rest of the series is indexed in the general damages guide.

Canadian Law Treats Chronic Pain as a Real Injury

In Nova Scotia (Workers’ Compensation Board) v Martin the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a workers’ compensation scheme that excluded chronic pain from benefits. The Court accepted that chronic pain exists, that it disables people, and that treating sufferers as malingerers is not a defensible starting point. Tort claims are decided under different rules, but no court in the region now begins from the assumption that unexplained pain is invented. The decision is on CanLII.

Credibility Carries the Case

Without a lesion to point at, the award rests on whether the judge believes the person. Consistency is what builds that. Reports of pain that match across the family doctor’s chart, the physiotherapy notes, the employer’s records and the evidence of people who see the person daily are far more persuasive than a strong description given once at trial. Surveillance and social media are the usual attacks.

Pre-Existing Conditions Do Not Defeat the Claim

A defendant takes the injured person as they find them. Athey v Leonati confirmed that a pre-existing back or neck problem does not reduce liability when the collision made it symptomatic. What it does allow is a reduction for the extent the condition would have deteriorated anyway, which is why the pre-crash medical history gets read closely on both sides.

Persistent Soft Tissue Pain Has Its Own Line of Nova Scotia Cases

Nova Scotia courts have long worked from Smith v Stubbert when valuing soft tissue injuries that remain painful and bothersome for years without preventing work. The award band it established is well known to counsel in the province and is adjusted for inflation and for how far the individual case sits above or below the pattern. Injuries that stop the person working entirely are valued well outside it.

Where General Damages for Chronic Pain Overlap Other Chapters

Chronic pain rarely arrives alone. It usually attaches to a diagnosed injury in the neck or the back, and it frequently brings a mood disorder with it, which is covered in the chapter on psychological injury. It is also the most common reason a claim is denied by a disability insurer, which the firm handles as long term disability work.