Woman with traumatic brain injury sought to revive statutory accident benefits stopped by insurer
Ontario’s Licence Appeal Tribunal has determined that an incident involving an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) that crashed into a tree and caused traumatic brain injury to the driver was an accident under s. 3(1) of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule.
In Crowley v Security National Insurance Company, 2026 CanLII 80181 (ON LAT), the applicant had no motor vehicle liability policy during the relevant period.
On June 26, 2020, the applicant was on a rural property of around 1,000 acres, intersected by multiple public highways. Her friends’ family operated the private property.
That day, the applicant drove an ATV from an area of the rural property to a swimming pond, with a part of her trip traversing a public highway. She was returning from the pond when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed against a tree.
Due to the incident, the applicant sustained injuries that amounted to a catastrophic impairment.
The applicant claimed benefits from the respondent insurance company under the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule - Effective September 1, 2010 (including amendments effective June 1, 2016).
For almost two years, the insurer accepted the applicant’s claim for statutory accident benefits. The insurer then denied the requested benefits upon finding that the ATV incident was not an accident under s. 3(1) of the Schedule.
Before the Licence Appeal Tribunal’s Automobile Accident Benefits Service, the applicant applied for the resolution of the dispute.
To conclude that an accident had indeed occurred, the Licence Appeal Tribunal decided that the ATV was an automobile under the Schedule because it needed to be insured.
The tribunal explained that the ATV had to be insured because it was a motor vehicle that the applicant operated on a public highway during a single contemporaneous trip, resulting in the incident in which she sustained catastrophic injury.
The tribunal noted that the requirement for insurance arose once the applicant drove the ATV onto a public highway.
In reaching its conclusion, the tribunal cited the exception to s. 2(1) of Ontario’s Off-Road Vehicles Act, 1990, which provided the rule that the legislation would not apply to off-road vehicles operated on a highway.
Under the exception, a person could drive an off-road vehicle across or on a highway if:
“While the mandatory insurance requirement ceases once the ATV is no longer on a public highway, I cannot disassociate the fact that the Applicant’s operation of the ATV occurred both on a public highway and on private property during the continuous operation of the vehicle and that the accident occurred during that contemporaneous incident,” wrote Brian Norris, vice chair, for the tribunal. “The ATV cannot require insurance and not require insurance during the same contemporaneous incident.”
To address this conflict, the tribunal favoured expanding accident benefit coverage to someone like the applicant, who sustained injury in a motor vehicle accident during a contemporaneous, continuous trip that meandered on and off a public highway.
Given its conclusion that there had been an accident, the Licence Appeal Tribunal considered it unnecessary to address whether s. 131(1)(b) of Ontario’s Insurance Act, 1990, estopped the insurer from denying the applicant’s accident benefits claim.
Here are some other recent injury-related decisions from the Ontario Licence Appeal Tribunal.
The Licence Appeal Tribunal made a Mar. 5 decision determining that a party was involved in an accident under s. 3(1) of the Schedule that involved a Boomer Beast 2 D Deluxe, which qualified as an automobile in ordinary parlance.
In proceedings arising from an automobile accident, the Licence Appeal Tribunal issued a July 16 decision removing the injured party from the Minor Injury Guideline based on her accident-caused chronic pain with functional limitations.
The Licence Appeal Tribunal made a June 22 decision finding that the limited evidence about the involvement of the injured party’s ex-counsel for about a year did not offer a persuasive explanation for the delay in pursuing accident benefits.
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