I’ve covered the Apology Act on Slaw [1]before, and Dan Pinnington [2] has touched on the implication for insurers [3].
One of my professors at UWO, Dr. Craig Brown [4], has taken it a step further, and suggests it may even assist insurers. Dr. Brown is the author of Insurance Law in Canada [5], probably the foremost work in this area.
In a recent article in The Lawyers Weekly [6] 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 [7] in their practice, especially as it relates to public apologies.