The plaintiff sought indemnity from a builder corporation and several individual investors for payments made to homeowners under the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act.
The claim relied on a Tarion standard-form indemnity agreement allegedly signed by the individual defendants.
The court found the individual defendants had only signed a single signature page that had been fraudulently inserted among unrelated financing documents by another defendant, and that earlier versions of the agreement submitted to the plaintiff were forgeries.
Although the defendants were careless in signing the document, the plaintiff’s own lack of diligence in accepting altered net worth statements and failing to verify the indemnitors contributed materially to the circumstances.
Balancing the competing principles from fraud and non est factum jurisprudence, the court held the defendants were not liable under the purported indemnity agreement.
