Toronto Injury Lawyer Blog
Has someone other than you driven your car without your knowledge?
What happens if that mystery person gets in to a car accident?
What happens if you knowingly loan your vehicle to someone else to drive; and that person gets in to a car accident; but it turns out that the driver was operating your vehicle without a driver’s license or with a suspended driver’s license?
What happens if you loan your vehicle to a driver who was specified as an excluded driver under the policy?
While these hypothetical fact patterns may seem a bit remote, or foolish, they happen more than you think!
Cases such as these often see their way up the the Court of Appeal, or try to get heard at the Supreme Court. Leave to appeal is sometimes granted, and sometimes denied. Nonetheless, these coverage issues do not stop the parties from trying to get their cases heard before the Supreme Court. These cases drive the law in one direction or another. Often large insurers will spend a disproportionate amount of money arguing these coverage claims given that they will impact present and future coverage disputes. What this means is if on the face of the claim, the parties agree that the damages would range between $40,000-$100,000; insurers will spend that money if not more arguing the disputes. These are business decisions based upon legal principals in order to get the law right. And when I mean right, I mean working in favour of an insurer to deny coverage and not the other way around.
The grand lesson from all of these hypotheticals and decisions is that it’s very important to know who you are loaning your car to, and to know whether or not that person is allowed to legally drive. If not, you could end up in the wrong without coverage.
