Gore Mutual Insurance Company v. Co-operators General Insurance Company was released on September 18, 2008 by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
I wish this case had been around last year because I remember researching on the topic. The Ontario Reports summarized the case as follows:
A 19 year-old man, J was struck and catastrophically injured by a motor vehicle insured by Co-operators. At the time of the accident, he was living with his mother and stepfather. The arbitrator found that on the date of the accident, J was a dependent of his mother and stepfather as he was principally dependent on them for financial support, so that Gore Mutual, which insured the vehicle of J’s stepfather, was liable to pay statutory accident benefits to J. Gore Mutual appealed.
Held:
The appeal should be dismissed.
The standard of review of the arbitrator’s decision was correctness. In determining whether dependency existed, the arbitrator looked at the nine months between, J’s dropping out of school and the accident. In the month before the accident, J eanred $1,430. However, over the entire nine months, he averaged $149 per week. The arbitrator did not err in looking at the entire nine months, he averaged $149 per week and not just at what J was earning at the time of the accident, in determining J’s earning capacity.
The key words here are principally dependent. I remembering having to research those two words over and over again. In our case, a young women S lived with her mother, two other sisters and brother. The mother of the family had been divorced from her husband since the children were young. However, the father continued to pay child support as per their agreement which was endorsed by a Ontario Superior Court Justice. S was hit as a pedestrian while visiting in the United States and suffered some serious injuries. The American driver did not have insurance. Therefore, a claim was made for S pursuant to her father’s insurance policy since nobody in S’s home had any insurance.
The matter resolved before proceeding to arbitration and S was compensated. She had been seriously injured in the accident and her gospel music career had also suffered.
In the case of S the issue was whether she could be deemed principally dependent on her father for financial support given the fact that she had not lived with him for years and was an adult. Factors in her favour were that her father continued to provide support, the father provided a statement wherein he indicated that without his support he didn’t think the family could survive, S was welcome to use his car, the fathers money was used for rent and utilities.
In Gore Mutual, the Ontario Superior Court upheld the arbitrator’s decision where he found the 19 year old principally dependent on his step-father.
