Carla A. Bekkering
Carla was born and raised in the Fraser Valley. She obtained her B.A.([History Major English Minor] in 1987 from Simon Fraser University. She then spent a year gaining business experience as a retail manager. She then went to law school and completed her LL.B. at the University of Victoria in 1991. Carla articled with a large Vancouver law firm and was called to the B.C. Bar in 1992. After her articles, Carla completed a judicial clerkship with the Tax Court of Canada in Ottawa. Upon completion of her clerkship, Carla returned to the Fraser Valley where she practiced law in the areas of plaintiff personal injury, family law and general litigation for many years. She then joined the ICBC team as an in-house litigator. After over five years as an in-house litigator with the insurance Corporation of British Columbia, Carla returned to private practice in the Fraser Valley and practiced in the area of Plaintiff Personal Injury, General Insurance, ICBC defence work and Construction Law. In 2009, Carla returned to Vancouver and joined Stevens Virgin in September of 2011.
In addition to her legal practice, Carla is active as a volunteer both inside and outside of the legal community. Carla has served as a director and treasurer on the MSA Museum Society Board. Carla has also served as a black belt instructor with Grandmaster Lee's Tae Kwon Do School in Abbotsford. Carla is an active Canadian Bar Association member. Most recently, Carla served in many Committees for the Canadian Bar Association (B.C. Branch) as a Committee member for the Advisory Committee to the Judicial Selection Committee and as a Committee member on the Court Services Committee. Carla also spent many years as chair of the Automobile Insurance Committee.
Carla excels in handling complex litigation matters including brain injury; complex orthopedic injuries; psychiatric injuries; complex wage loss claims and other major loss files. Carla has extensive jury trial experience both as Plaintiff Counsel and as Defence Counsel. Most recently, she successfully handled a lengthy jury trial [Trotto v. Banarec]; a complicated liability trial [Neufeld v. McRae] and was lead counsel on McKinnon v. Petersen where she obtained a successful finding of contributory negligence against the plaintiff.
Carla's areas of practice include ICBC defence litigation, general insurance litigation, medical malpractice and plaintiff personal injury. Carla is also interested in developing a practice that includes income tax litigation.
|
