Ongoing Adjustment

Larry Gilbertson, an arbitrator, appraiser, mediator and umpire with almost 60 years under his belt dealing with property and casualty insurance claims, has some advice for young people today.

“At some stage, it seems to me, you’ve got to make up your mind that you’re going to follow a certain career, and it’s tough, if you like a lot of things,” says Gilbertson, who spent 16 years as a claims adjuster, 18 as an insurance lawyer and the past 21 with Arbitration and Mediation Services (ADR) Canada Ltd., located in Toronto.

“I would have loved to have been a journalist. I would have loved to have been an Ontario land surveyor. I worked for the Department of Highways years ago, on a survey party for (Highway) 401. At one time, I had five jobs,” he reports.

One of those jobs, in the 1950s, was delivering bread for George Weston Limited in the Town of Leaside, which has since been subsumed by the City of Toronto.

“There was a day, back in the old days, when insurance agents used to come around and collect premium on life insurance policies, and I believe auto and homeowners’ policies,” he recounts. One agent who visited Gilbertson’s home asked what he did for a living. When he told the agent he was delivering bread, “she said, ‘You’re wasting your time; you should be an insurance adjuster,'” Gilbertson recalls.

INSURANCE BECKONS

“I had no idea what an insurance adjuster was, but she very kindly offered to phone and speak to a chap that she knew at the Underwriters Adjustment Bureau (UAB) and recommended that I meet with him,” he says.

From 1955 through 1959, Gilbertson worked for UAB, acquired in 2002 by systems integrator and computer services firm CGI Group Inc., which in 2009, sold its insurance adjusting operations to SCM Insurance Services Inc.

“I had a delightful year or two delivering bread,” Gilbertson recalls of his life before entering the “rotation” with UAB at its office, then on Front Street in downtown Toronto. Gilbertson says he had “some wonderful mentors”

at UAB to guide him as he spent six months working on auto claims, another six on marine and another six on property and fire.

From 1957 through 1959, Gilbertson managed UAB’s branch in Midland, about 150 kilometres north of Toronto. “I told them then, and I still believe it, that there is more scope for an amiable disposition as a property adjuster than as an automobile adjuster, where you are always wrangling about dinged bumpers and all that kind of stuff,” he says.

Gilbertson left UAB in 1959 to work for Angell & Townson Insurance Adjusters Ltd., rising to the role of vice president and director, before his resignation in 1971.

That is when he decided to study law. “I knew, having dealt with a lot of lawyers, I wouldn’t have to start at the bottom of the ladder,” he recalls. “I decided to try to get into law school and, finally, accomplished that, so that’s how I wound up in law. It wasn’t because I had a great, great driving need or desire from a young fellow to be a lawyer, but I knew that I was a good match for a lot of the lawyers that I had encountered and it worked out very well.”

From 1971 through 1974, Gilbertson attended law school at the University of Western Ontario in London. He was called to the bar in 1976, after articling at Montgomery Cassels Mitchell Somers Dutton & Winkler, where he worked until 1982.

That was when he opened his own law firm, Larry H. Gilberston & Associates, now known as Gilbertson Davis LLP, which practices insurance litigation, insurance defence and commercial litigation.

Gilbertson retired from active practice in 1994, although he has continued working in alternate dispute resolution. He also keeps busy in his spare time, volunteering at a hospital, and plans to play golf more frequently.

“I do more umpiring under the appraisal provision of (Ontario’s) Insurance Act than anything else,” says Gilbertson, adding he deals mostly with property issues, plus business interruption, stock losses, and industrial and residential claims.

“I prefer to do arbitrations or umpiring as opposed to mediating,” he says.

“Although I am a firm believer in the mediation process, the trouble is the mediator has to rely on pulling the parties together, and sometimes the people who are at the mediations are not ready to settle, are not interested in getting a resolution, and you have to walk away frustrated because you can’t get them to come together. One thing about umpiring and arbitrating, you can, as an arbitrator or umpire, drive toward a resolution and you can make it happen. You can’t do that as a mediator.”

As a lawyer, Gilbertson reports that he handled a lot of fire cases, as well as some involving building collapses. One claim he was involved in arose in September 1977 when an airplane crashed – killing the occupants – into a television tower in Barrie, about 100 kilometres north of Toronto.

To this day, he says he still thinks about the case every time he sees that tower while driving on Highway 400. “I was acting in that instance for the subrogated insurers of the tower and the equipment on the tower.”

Subrogation “gave me an opportunity to exercise my abilities and knowledge and experience in the casualty area,” Gilbertson points out.

“I firmly believe that a good property adjuster should have a good grasp of the casualty end of the business, for the purpose of subrogation, because he needs to understand the continuity of evidence, how to take statements and, generally, he’s the first guy there for the insurers,” he explains.

ACROSS THE LINES

This is one reason Gilbertson advises property adjusters to gain experience in other lines.

“Any property adjuster who doesn’t have a casualty and liability bent – some experience in that area – and then leaves the subrogation to some subrogation specialist – the opportunities are gone by the time he gets through his property adjustment and refers the file,” Gilbertson argues. “I just don’t think that’s a healthy situation at all,” he adds.

Many changes have unfolded over Gilbertson’s time in the business, but one thing that has not is the 24-7 nature of a claims adjuster’s job, he suggests.

“Young people today work very hard and deserve a lot of credit, but by God, that job has not changed basically over the years,” he suggests. “I think that the wonderful technology of today makes it easier to do good things quickly and efficiently. I don’t think there’s any question about that, but it doesn’t change the fact that the adjusters of yesteryear had to work hard.”

Prior to starting his job with UAB in 1955, Gilbertson says he asked a high school guidance counsellor if she had any information about insurance adjusting. “She said to me, ‘If you can talk people out of what they are entitled to, you can be an insurance adjuster,'” he recounts.

“I have often thought of that, and that is just a terrible commentary and a sour outlook on the insurance business, and on the adjusting profession. I hope I was never guilty of doing that and I sure hope that there are no adjusters or claims people that ever do it,” he adds.

Six decades after that conversation, though, Gilbertson has no regrets about his career choices. “I believe that there always will be insurance, so that’s a good thing for young people to think about,” he suggests.

“At some stage, you have to make the hard decision to focus on something and go for it,” he recommends.