From $0.00 to $2+ Million in Entitlements: Imtiaz Hosein of Campisi LLP Secures CAT Win for Injured Mother

For nearly a decade, Wawanesa dragged its feet—delaying, denying, and refusing to do what was right.

For nearly a decade, Ms. S was overlooked and ignored. By her insurer. By the system. By her prior representatives. She was left to navigate injuries caused by a motor vehicle accident without support, without acknowledgment, and without funding for benefits her doctors and therapists said she needed. But when she came to us, we listened. We acted. And we proved that even after years of being ignored, justice can still be achieved in the right hands—and for Ms. S, an opportunity to make life a little more livable.

Ms. S came to us more than eight years after her accident. A single mother. An immigrant from Trinidad. She had spent her life holding things together—for her daughter, for her aging mother, for the extended family that leaned on her. She wasn’t just responsible. She was depended on. Until the accident took that away.

She didn’t walk away.

She asked us to fight for her. And we did.

Ms. S’ Battle After a Motor Vehicle Accident

Ms. S had been rear-ended in a serious motor vehicle accident in 2013. She sustained soft tissue injuries. She thought they would get better. At first, she tried to push through. But the pain didn’t fade—it spread. She asked for help. Her doctors prescribed therapy and support. She asked Wawanesa to fund it. They didn’t. Her condition worsened. And so did the consequences.

Her frustration deepened. Depression set in. Her role as a mother collapsed to the point that she lost custody of her daughter. She couldn’t work. She had to turn to ODSP. Eventually, she couldn’t manage her own care without support from personal support workers and family.

For approximately a decade, Wawanesa refused to help. They ignored what was obvious. No meaningful assessments. No benefit approvals. Just delays. Denials. And eventually—silence.

Catastrophic Injuries Uncovered

When Ms. S came to our office, we arranged for new catastrophic assessments under s.25 of the SABS. We retained experts with the right specialities—real, reliable, court-proven experts. They found she was catastrophically impaired. Marked impairments in social functioning and adaptation. A 72% whole person impairment.

Wawanesa’s s.44 assessors refused to even assign ratings. Instead, they implied she was faking. They offered nothing of substance. Just vague references to behaviour and conclusions without support.

In November 2024, we brought her case before the Licence Appeal Tribunal. Senior counsel Imtiaz Hosein, argued Ms. S' case, assisted by articling student Christos Kakaletris. Over five days, we presented the evidence, defended Ms. S' integrity, and cross-examined Wawanesa’s paid experts.

We reminded the Tribunal that Ms. S had already been deemed disabled by the Social Benefits Tribunal in 2016. Wawanesa knew this. They just chose not to care. Their experts leaned on flawed assumptions. They misapplied the AMA Guides. And they ignored the growing, documented record of physical and psychological decline.  

At the hearing, Wawanesa leaned on surveillance footage and the testimony of a psychiatrist, Dr. Wiesenthal, who dismissed Ms. S’ psychiatric suffering using a screening tool—the M-FAST—rather than a full psychiatric test. The Tribunal gave little weight to that opinion. It found that she should have done more.

From Zero to $2 Million: Securing the Funding Ms. S Deserved

The Tribunal cut through the noise and saw Wawanesa’s position for what it really was. It rejected their psychiatric reports and surveillance footage as unpersuasive, speculative, and analytically hollow.

The Tribunal accepted Ms. S’ testimony. It accepted Dr. Gavett-Liu’s psychiatric evidence. It found Ms. S had a marked impairment in social functioning. It found the 2013 accident to be a necessary cause of her impairments—even if not the only one. That’s the legal threshold. We met it.

The result: the $2 million door for medical and rehabilitation, and attendant care funding, was opened. From zero—to $2 million.

What This Case Represents

Some older files are just numbers. Others are legacies of systemic neglect. Of big corporations turning away from the people they exist to serve.

This case proves that a decade-old claim can still matter. That zero-offers can become full entitlements. That insurers who refuse to listen can be made to answer.

If you’ve been told your file is worthless, ask someone who knows better. That’s what Ms. S did. And now she is legally entitled to get the care she needed all along. A full $2 million in accident benefits coverage—denied for over a decade—finally unlocked.