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The court awarded retroactive attendant care benefits and compound interest to a catastrophically impaired insured, finding the insurer breached its duty of good faith.
The plaintiff, Denis Roy, was seriously injured in a 2004 motorcycle accident, suffering physical and psychological impairments.
His insurer, Primmum Insurance Co. (referred to as TD), initially paid attendant care benefits (ACBs) and housekeeping benefits (HKBs) but later reduced and terminated them.
Roy applied for a catastrophic impairment (CAT) determination in 2010, which TD contested for over three years before conceding in 2014.
Roy then sought retroactive ACBs and HKBs, plus statutory interest, from the date of the accident.
The court found that Roy was catastrophically impaired from the date of the accident, that the claimed retroactive ACBs were reasonable and necessary, and that TD was obligated to pay statutory interest due to its failure to comply with SABS obligations and its duty of good faith.
The court denied the plaintiffs' motion to call multiple duplicative expert witnesses, reinforcing the trial judge's gatekeeper function against the piling on of experts.
The Plaintiffs sought leave under s. 12 of the Evidence Act to call more than three expert witnesses at trial and an order to abridge time for service of their expert reports.
The Defendant opposed, citing late service and duplication of expert evidence.
The court applied factors for granting leave, emphasizing the "gatekeeper" role of the trial judge and the policy behind s. 12 of the Evidence Act, which applies to all experts offering opinion evidence, including participant experts.
The court found significant duplication among the proposed psychiatric, psychological, and occupational therapy experts and that several reports were served late without adequate justification.
The motion was largely denied, limiting the Plaintiffs to one expert per specialty for opinion evidence and restricting the scope of a physiotherapist's testimony to observations rather than future recommendations for litigation purposes.
