Calgary man rebuilds life after receiving more than $1M in auto insurance settlement
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
148.75755
Summary
Parsa Amiri was seriously injured in a crash on the Trans-Canada Highway, a crash that left him with permanent nerve damage and changed the course of his life. He says his lawyer helped him get a second chance in life after securing a $1 million settlement.
Transcript
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Parsa Amiri, a former athlete from Calgary, was seriously injured in a crash on the Trans-Canada
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Highway, a crash that left him with permanent nerve damage and changed the course of his life.
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So my accident happened in 2020, beginning of it in January. And basically what happened is
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we got in a car accident and I had a severe whiplash injury where I broke four to five
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bones in my spine. And one of them basically came out of place. It was pinching my spinal cord
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and that caused a lot of issues in my back, including some nerve damage to my legs and
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things like that. So I had to get surgery and they removed the bone and replaced it with a
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bunch of rods, things like that to stabilize it. And yeah, that was pretty much it.
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He says his lawyer helped him get a second chance in life after securing a $1 million settlement.
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Right. I have the opportunity to go to school thanks to that, which is, you know, something
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else I can start, right? It's something I can think about. And all the years that I couldn't work,
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and even now I can't really do anything crazy, right? I can't constantly work. My body is not in
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shape anymore. It's constantly in pain. I'm always going to physio and, you know, I need treatment
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every couple of weeks to be able to even move properly. So paying for all that is insanely high,
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you're paying like over $100 almost weekly. So without support from a lawyer, there's no way
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anyone can afford that. But in 2027, Alberta will move to a no-fault system, eliminating the right to
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sue. It's because of the tort system and the current system that I was able to get involved
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and fight to get him the treatment that he so desperately needed. And I also think it's important
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to note that someone like Parsa with, you know, the severe injuries he had, like broken vertebrae in
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his neck and back, he was awarded in excess of a million dollars. And under the new system,
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the Care First no-fault system, he would get only a maximum of up to $187,000. And also,
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he would not have a lawyer in his corner. He would have to deal with the insurance company
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by himself. And the insurance company would get to be the judge, jury, and executioner on what
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treatment he gets, if he gets treatment, and how long he gets treatment for. Amiri is now studying
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law, hoping others won't lose the right that helped him rebuild his life.