The Supreme Court of Canada this morning granted leave to Citadel Insurance to appeal last year’s decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Vytlingam v. Farmer et al. Subscribers will recall that in that case, three North Carolina youths placed…
In a case that may be of interest to LawPRO examiners as a possible harbinger of things to come in this country, an American insurer, dissatisfied with the outcome of a suit that it took to trial, has sued its…
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal in Blight v. Axa and Royal & SunAlliance Insurance Company. Our firm acted for the successful respondent, Royal & SunAlliance. Royal insured a tenant and the issue was whether the policy…
In our continuing effort to catch up on cases decided this month, we would like to draw your attention today to an important ruling by Mr. Justice David Stinson, in Somwar v. McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Ltd. This was a…
The recent judgment of Superior Court Justice Ruth Mesbur in Moore v. Wienecke reads more like a law school problem than a real-life set of facts. The plaintiff was involved in motor vehicle accidents in 1998 and 2002, which were the claims…
This month, the Court of Appeal has released two decisions dealing with an insurer’s “duty to defend”.Kohanski v. St. Paul The first is Kohanski v. St. Paul Guarantee Insurance Company. The issue in the case was whether a duty to…
Justice Denis Power of the Ontario Superior Court has released a significant ruling on the issue of allocation of defence costs. The case is Hanis v. The University of Western Ontario et al.; Guardian Insurance et al., third parties. As…
After a series of recent Bill 59 “threshold” decisions that have favoured insurers (most recently Page v. Primeau, which was the subject of a previous Update), a Superior Court judge has decided a threshold motion in favour of the plaintiff. In Sasso…
A Superior Court decision released this afternoon deals with a recurring problem in the field of liability insurance: where the total claims greatly exceed the policy limits, can one claimant settle and obtain payment of the entire amount of his or…
In McLean v. Jorgenson, released this afternoon, the Ontario Court of Appeal addressed the often-litigated issue of an insurer’s duty to defend. Its decision contained some interesting elements that are likely to have significance in future cases, particularly those involving…