Intact and Dominion have been ordered to pay a public auto fund's claim costs - even though neither disputed who owed the benefits.
An Ontario court has sided with the province's Motor Vehicle Accident Claims Fund in a fight over who picks up the tab for investigating car accident claims that private insurers were always going to pay.
In a decision dated March 20, 2026, Justice L. Brownstone of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered Intact Insurance Company and The Dominion of Canada General Insurance to reimburse the Fund for the expenses it incurred while processing two Statutory Accident Benefits claims. The amounts - $5,309.08 and $10,054.34 - are modest, but the principle behind the ruling carries weight across Ontario's auto insurance market.
The case, HMK (Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery) v. Intact Insurance Company, 2026 ONSC 1713, turns on a straightforward scenario. When someone is injured in a car accident and no insurer immediately steps up, the Fund - a publicly financed safety net — handles the claim. Once a private insurer accepts responsibility, it reimburses the Fund for benefits already paid. The question here was whether the insurer also has to cover the Fund's costs for doing the legwork - the investigating and adjusting that any insurer would have done on its own.
Both Intact and Dominion said no. They accepted responsibility for the benefits in their respective claims - one involving Linda Jenkins, injured in December 2020, and the other involving Tamara Clark, injured in December 2018 - but refused to pay the Fund's processing costs.
The Fund took the matter to court rather than arbitration, arguing there was nothing to arbitrate. Neither insurer had challenged its obligation to pay the benefits. The only disagreement was over the ancillary fees.
The insurers pushed back on multiple fronts. They argued the Fund should have gone to an arbitrator. They said 2010 amendments to Regulation 283/95 had eliminated the Fund's ability to seek this kind of reimbursement through the courts. And they maintained the costs were simply not recoverable.
Justice Brownstone disagreed on all counts. The court found that the regulation governing priority disputes does not apply where there is no actual dispute about who pays the benefits. The 2010 amendments, the court noted, were designed to strengthen the Fund's position - not weaken it. Before 2010, most insurers paid these expenses routinely, and many continued to do so for years afterward.
The ruling also carried a pointed warning. Denying the Fund recovery in these situations, the court observed, would effectively penalize insurers who cooperate promptly while rewarding those who drag things out - exactly the kind of delay the system was built to prevent.
The court applied the principle of unjust enrichment, finding that both insurers benefited from work they would have had to do themselves. Intact was ordered to pay $5,309.08 plus interest, Dominion $10,054.34 plus interest, and each was ordered to pay $5,000 in costs.
The decision also steps into territory the Court of Appeal for Ontario left unresolved last year in Echelon General Insurance Company v. Unifund Assurance, 2025 ONCA 324, where the court expressly declined to decide whether the Fund could recover pre-arbitration expenses. That question now has an answer - at least at the Superior Court level.
