A Saskatchewan insurer's attempt to kill a 20-year crop insurance claim has failed - partly because the court found the insurer helped cause the delay.
In a decision released March 24, 2026, Justice D.N. Robertson of the King's Bench for Saskatchewan dismissed an application by Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation to throw out a long-running claim brought by policyholder Kevin Arnold. SCIC had filed the application on January 12, 2026, arguing that more than two decades of delay justified ending the case entirely.
The dispute traces back to 2002 and 2003, when Arnold alleges SCIC failed to pay on his crop insurance. He filed his statement of claim in July 2005, and SCIC responded with a defence and counter-claim. What followed was a slow-moving but continuous litigation - spanning discovery, pre-trial conferences, and multiple applications over nearly every year since.
The case took a notable turn in 2020. After Justice Hildebrandt dismissed SCIC's earlier attempt to strike the claim for failing to disclose a reasonable cause of action, Arnold was granted leave to amend his pleading. The amended statement of claim added allegations of malicious conduct, abuse of power, intimidation, misfeasance, and defamatory allegations against Arnold. Among the specific claims: that Danny Dunn and Guy Shepherd told Robert Howorth and Don Gillen that Arnold was a "crook" with "dishonest dealings" who was "the subject of a police fraud investigation." None of these allegations have been proven in court.
In its January 2026 application, SCIC pointed to nearly nine years of delay it attributed to Arnold, including prolonged gaps in providing documents, undertakings, and responses to demands for particulars. SCIC argued it was seriously prejudiced, noting that potential witnesses had left its employment, had little or no memory of relevant events, or had died.
Justice Robertson agreed the delay was both inordinate and inexcusable. But under Saskatchewan's established legal framework - which requires a final check on whether the interests of justice still favour letting the claim proceed - the court declined to dismiss.
The sticking point was SCIC's own conduct. In September 2018, SCIC filed an application to strike the claim while simultaneously asking the court to hold off on setting a trial date. A trial was later scheduled for January 2020 but vacated while the parties awaited a ruling on that application. Justice Robertson observed that SCIC "seems to want to have it both ways."
Equally telling, SCIC had never filed a defence to Arnold's 2020 amended statement of claim, leaving pleadings open. And while SCIC served a demand for particulars in October 2020 and later sought a better response in November 2022, it agreed to adjourn its own application on that issue. As the court put it, SCIC "cannot then lay the entire blame for delay on Mr. Arnold."
