© NICK PROCAYLO Workers at an ICBC damaged vehicle lot.

The shocking final numbers are in from ICBC’s last fiscal year and the picture is not exactly a pretty one.

In fact, the timing is perfect for Halloween because the public auto insurer’s books are scary as hell.

Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is scheduled to release its annual financial statement on Monday, but I obtained an advance copy of the 126-page document.

How can I describe it? Let’s just say it’s dripping in red ink.

As expected, the statement shows ICBC bleeding money, booking a total loss of $1.15 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31 of this year.

That means ICBC lost a little over $2.8 million a day in fiscal 2018-19.

That’s just slightly less than what ICBC lost in fiscal 2017-18, when ICBC booked a staggering loss of $1.32 billion, losing about $3.6 million a day.

Where is all that money going? That’s where this year’s financial statement gets really interesting.

For the first time, ICBC is reporting a line item in the statement showing how much money was paid out to personal-injury lawyers.

The schedule of “plaintiff firm payments” shows ICBC paid out a total of $1.91 billion to 42 personal-injury law firms. That includes $184 million for “plaintiff costs and disbursements” including the use of adversarial expert witnesses in court cases. It also includes $1.73 billion in legal settlements, largely to people injured in car crashes.

Lawyers representing their clients typically take a 30 per cent cut of the settlements, meaning personal-injury lawyers pocketed more than a half-a-billion dollars last year.

Attorney General David Eby said soaring legal fees are a key reason for ICBC’s financial hemorrhaging.

“It’s frankly out of control,” Eby told me, noting ICBC spends a tonne of money on its own lawyers, too.

“It’s a big, bloated infrastructure on both sides — for plaintiffs and defendants — that people have to pay for on their car insurance,” he said.

Eby has been trying to put a lid on legal costs, and it looked like he was making progress when ICBC broke even in the first quarter of the current fiscal year. But Eby suffered a major setback last week when personal-injury lawyers beat him in court on a key cost-cutting move.

To reduce legal costs, the NDP government ordered a cap on the maximum number of expert-witness reports allowed in court cases: Two expert reports for cases under $100,000 and a maximum of three reports allowed for cases over $100,000.

The Trial Lawyers Association of B.C. took the government to court, arguing the limits were unconstitutional and unfair to people injured in car crashes.

“It penalizes the most severely injured people,” argued association president Ron Nairne, noting cases of crash victims with multiple injuries — including brain damage and psychological trauma — often require the most expert evidence to secure a fair financial settlement with ICBC.

The B.C. Supreme Court agreed with the lawyers, slapping down Eby’s limits on expert testimony.

Eby admits the defeat could reopen ICBC’s financial wounds.

“It’s a really significant setback for us,” Eby told me. “The saving are obviously not going to be realized.”

But it could get even worse if the trial lawyers score a second legal victory over the cost-cutting attorney general.

Last February, Eby brought in a $5,500 payment cap for pain and suffering from “minor injuries” sustained in car crashes.

The trial lawyers are fighting that one, too, and Eby admitted he’s worried about back-to-back defeats in court.

“It’s certainly on my mind,” Eby told me. “That change transformed ICBC’s bottom line in the order of a billion dollars. It’s a big deal if that one goes down.”

Meanwhile, as Eby battles the personal-injury lawyers, a separate political battle has erupted.

“David Eby is just blundering around in the dark,” Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson told me. “He said he was going to be a hero and save millions of dollars with these cockamamie ideas, but he blew it. Now B.C. drivers better get out their chequebooks. This is going to cost them.”

Wilkinson repeated his pledge to conduct a “complete review” of ICBC operations, while not ruling out privatizing the Crown corporation or forcing it to compete against private insurance companies.

“We have a 45-year-old state-run monopoly that doesn’t work,” Wilkinson said. “The NDP has to start wearing this. Fix it.”

But Eby dished it right back at the Liberal leader.

“ICBC is in a lot of trouble because of the actions of the last government,” Eby said. “They handed over a corporation losing a billion dollars a year.

“I won’t take criticism from Andrew Wilkinson. He’s the last guy who should say the Liberals would do a better job. They had a chance. They didn’t do it.”

As the war of words rages, Eby better hope the trial lawyers don’t beat him in court again. If they do, his ICBC troubles could get even worse.

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