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It isn’t the first time the courts have told ICBC to stop applying its benefits rule so narrowly. In April, three Court of Appeal justices rejected ICBC’s attempt to overturn an almost identical 2014 ruling, in which it was ordered to pay permanent disability benefits to Heidi Symons, another injured motorist.

Powell, now 60, said she was completely devastated when ICBC denied her disability claim in 2013.

“They made my life hell, actually. They denied me everything,” she said in a telephone interview from Victoria. “I literally cried for days. I didn’t know what I was going to do. ”

At stake was a $300-a-week payment that ICBC was obligated to pay, and which Powell said was all that stood between her and losing her home.

“I knew I could scrape by on what they paid. I knew that I could keep my townhouse as long as I had that money coming in. When my lawyer told me it was denied, I literally had no idea what I was going to do next,” Powell said. “It meant that I had to sell my townhouse. I had to uproot everything and move to Victoria so my children could help me. I had to leave my friends.”

In her judgement, Dillon also discounted the testimony of ICBC’s medical expert and gave more weight to Powell’s two doctors, who had treated her over several years and certified she was unable to work as a result of the back and neck injuries sustained in the accident.

The two Supreme Court judgements and the Court of Appeal ruling, put together, make it clear that ICBC can no longer narrowly interpret a law that sets the eligibility criteria for disability payments, said Powell’s lawyer Jacqueline Small.