The families of two young men who died in a crash involving a police vehicle in 2022 say the insurance system has denied them justice.
Yasbirat Habtamu Hailu, 17, and Samir Ali, 18, suffered fatal injuries on July 26, 2022, when their vehicle was struck by a white sedan that Metro Vancouver Transit Police said was fleeing a traffic stop.
The teens were on their way home from a soccer match at the time.
“My family is destroyed,” Suleiman Ali Hassan, Smair’s father, told Global News.
“My wife, before she work, but now she cannot work when the mind is not like before.”
Hassan said his eight-year-old son also asks where his brother is or if he is coming back.
“All the family is not like before… we come from my country to run from the war (in Ethiopia) to peace, in Canada, but when I come here… all my family is destroyed now.”
Hassan said ICBC refused to pay anything to help their family.
“We paid the insurance, but still we not get anything,” he added.
Speaking through a translator, Habtamu Hailu, Yasbirat’s father, said, “The reason we are here today is that we haven’t had justice for our son… he was our firstborn and he was the one we were depending on for his siblings and ourselves.”
Hailu said that the loss of his son was the loss of a “vital part of our family.”
“We don’t even have any compensation to help raise the rest of our children,” he added.
The families have also launched a petition to bring awareness to their stories and enact change so that no other families have to go through this.
Cory Robert Ulmer Brown was charged with two counts of criminal negligence causing death, one count of driving while disqualified, and one count of flight from police.
Brown was on 24-hour house arrest following the incident, police said. He was sentenced in 2024 to five and a half years in prison and is banned from driving for 10 years.
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ICBC confirmed to Global News that each family roughly received $40,000 as part of their Enhanced Care insurance model coverage, which was introduced in May 2021.
The families’ lawyer, Christopher Bacon with Drysdale Bacon McStravick, explained that the families were not able to claim money under the Uninsured Motorist Protection, because they had already accepted the other money under Enhanced Care.
Bacon said that before the laws changed, everyone was required to carry uninsured motorist protection in case they were injured or killed by an uninsured driver.
“In this case, Cory Brown, who’s convicted of criminal negligence causing death, is an uninsured driver, because that’s a breach of his policy,” Bacon said.
“So rather than sue Cory Brown, who is in jail and doesn’t have any money and would go bankrupt if he was successfully sued, you used to be able to appoint an arbitrator and prove your damages to that arbitrator up to the policy limit of a million dollars, and ICBC would just pay the arbitrator’s decision.”
Bacon said there would be deductions, such as no-fault benefits, now called Enhanced Care Benefits, for funeral expenses, which would be deducted from the bigger payout.
“But these families came to us after May of 2021 when a new law took effect, and they came in with their $15,000 enhanced care benefits cheques, and they didn’t want to cash them, because they wanted to sue Cory Brown for wrongful death,” Bacon added.
He said his clients do have a claim, as this is one of the rare cases where people can still sue for their full rights.
“We all have to have enhanced care coverage, that’s part of our basic auto insurance, and the same policy also offers uninsured motorist protection, but the new law says if you’re covered for enhanced care, you can never be covered for uninsured motorist protection,” Bacon said.
“So our clients were furious, like, why are they being compelled to purchase uninsured motorist protection that will never apply? So we took the extra step of appointing an arbitrator alleging ambiguity, because that’s the only way you can get an arbitrator involved and we asked for some statistics, like, how many uninsured motorist claims have been paid out since May of 2021? What’s the amount of the premium that people are required to pay for this coverage that may never apply? And the arbitrator declined.”
Bacon said the best advice he can offer is that people should have their own private insurance, in addition to ICBC insurance.
“They need private life insurance,” he said. “They need private extended health benefits. They need private wage replacement benefits. Because I think the objective has been to lower premiums above all else, without really notifying the public that their coverages have been substantially emptied out.”
ICBC said in a statement that, along with the B.C. government, they take concerns about their enhanced care policy seriously, adding that an independent review of the model will begin later this year.
“You have to have basic coverage to drive a vehicle, otherwise you’re breaking the law,” Bacon said.
“So you have to buy basic coverage. That basic coverage must include both enhanced care and uninsured motorists protection. So you’re not allowed out of here. You’re not allowed on the roadways without those coverages.
“But if you’re entitled to enhanced care, when can you ever qualify for uninsured motorist protection, even in the rare circumstance where the at-fault driver was convicted of a criminal driving offence.”