For the vast majority of the existence of Canada’s property and casualty insurance industry, overland flood was deemed to be uninsurable for Canadian homeowners. While commercial entities have been able to purchase flood insurance for decades, it was only eight…
Read more →The Ontario Court of Appeal has overturned a lower decision that found an insurer owed a duty to defend an insured in a sexual assault claim, under a commercial general liability policy. The Claim In Southside Muay Thai Academy Corp.…
Read more →To the lay person, it only stands to reason that a business interruption policy would respond to what for many enterprises isn’t merely an interruption in their business, it is quite possibly a death knell. This is certainly the sentiment…
Read more →The Ontario government announced last Friday that it was suspending limitation periods while the province was under a state of emergency because of COVID-19. This will have a major impact on loss transfer and priority disputes. Loss Transfer Limitation Periods…
Read more →In our first article in the Priority Dispute Series, I provided an overview of Ontario’s accident benefit priority dispute scheme and the process necessary to pursue and dispute priority. To recap: The priority pecking order is found in subsections 268 (2) to…
Read more →It’s a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, of course, and you’ve just received a potential SABS priority dispute. A new Application for Accident Benefits arrives on your desk and the claimant alleges that she was in your insured’s vehicle…
Read more →In a recent online article, Canadian Underwriter magazine asked the question, Is the sun setting on auto insurance in Canada? In my view, it may be late afternoon for the automobile insurance market, but I think it will be a…
Read more →What happens when a Certificate of Automobile Insurance specifies that the policy includes coverages under certain endorsements, when those endorsements never make it onto the policy? The Certificate and OPCF Endorsements Ontario’s standard automobile policy (OAP1) offers a number of…
Read more →Does Uber’s fleet policy with Intact provide primary accident benefits coverage to passengers who do not have their own auto insurance policies? The first arbitration decision on this issue says “yes”. Background In July 2016, FSCO approved a new standard…
Read more →Is a school bus company making a bus available for an employee driver’s regular use “at the time of the accident”, if she is not allowed to use the bus at the time of an accident? In TD Insurance v. Dominion,…
Read more →The Ontario Divisional Court has ruled that Ontario laws cannot be used to determine whether a specific vehicle needs to be insured, when an incident happens outside Ontario. Why is this Important? Automobile insurance is meant to insure automobiles and…
Read more →As Ontario’s auto insurance industry was waiting anxiously, the Court of Appeal for Ontario released an interesting decision on priority dispute notices to claimants. In Dominion v. Unifund, an accident benefits claimant was not notified of the priority dispute between…
Read more →If we expect to make any progress on the natural disaster risk reduction front, we are going to have to come to a few understandings. Here are just a few of the things we will have to make peace with:…
Read more →The Court of Appeal for Ontario has held that a Minnesota tortfeasor with only $500,000 liability limits is an “inadequately insured motorist” under the Family Protection Endorsement (OPCF 44R) in Ontario, where the 44R limits are $1 million. In Hartley v.…
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