By Julius Melnitzer | August 31, 2025
INSURER PUNISHED FOR “HARDBALL” APPROACH
The Ontario Court of Appeal has awarded $300,000 in partial indemnity costs to a claimant who recovered only $16,000 by way of a jury award in a motor vehicle accident proceeding in which she had sought over $1 million. In doing so, the court approved the trial judge’s conclusion that the insurer’s refusal to make an offer was unreasonable because it was aware that the claimant was entitled to “some damages”. The OCA stated:
Here there was some recovery by the plaintiff and the trial judge found that the respondent’s unreasonable refusal to make a monetary offer required that this complex and important matter go to trial, resulting in voluminous medical and employment records and extensive mental and health-related evidence. Although the costs order substantially exceeded the recovery, the costs order was proportionate to the importance and complexity of the issues, and to the amount involved in the litigation. I would not interfere with that determination.
Related Article: Recent costs award confirms court’s acknowledgement of risks, costs of prosecuting med mal cases
AI GAME-CHANGING FOR LAW FIRM MARKETING
Kevin O’Keefe, a lawyer with 39 years’ experience and the CEO and founder of LexBlog, Inc., now “the largest community of legal publishers in the world”, says in a recent blog that law firm marketers, particularly those at Big Law, have fallen behind the times by continuing to chase “SEO, search and analytics” and “designing their web strategy around it”. He notes that Google AI Overviews, a feature built into Google Search that uses generative AI to create summaries at the top of search results instead of just showing a list of links, is causing a 25% drop in search referrals traffic. ChatGPT and Gemini are apparently having a similar effect. O’Keefe concludes:
For AI, authority—not SEO, website traffic, or analytics—is everything. The lawyers and firms taking deliberate steps to ensure their publishing is recognized and cited as authoritative in AI will again be ahead of many large law firms.
Related Article: Strategies for lawyers: Become your own marketing department
Julius Melnitzer is a Toronto-based legal affairs writer, ghostwriter, writing coach and media trainer. Readers can reach him at julius@legalwriter.net or on his website.