Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal has handed Co-operators General Insurance Company a clean win, tossing a disability discrimination case tied to a denied auto claim.
The application, filed on July 22, 2025 by Aaron Kemp, accused the insurer of brushing aside his disability when it refused to pay out on a claim stemming from a June 2023 motor vehicle accident. On April 30, 2026, in Kemp v. Co-operators General Insurance Company, adjudicator Aulaire O'Malley ruled the matter sat squarely outside the Tribunal's jurisdiction - a decision that quietly reinforces a familiar but powerful shield for insurers facing human rights complaints over contested claims.
The dispute began with a phone call. Co-operators denied Kemp's claim on the basis that he had allegedly failed to disclose material information during a conversation in April 2022, more than a year before the accident. Kemp pushed back. He launched a Small Claims Court action on April 30, 2024, arguing that his disability may have shaped how he understood the discussion that took place during that 2022 call. The court file closed at a settlement conference on January 22, 2025.
Six months later, Kemp turned to the Human Rights Tribunal. He alleged that the insurer discriminated against him by failing to meaningfully consider his disability-based arguments during the court process. The Tribunal issued a Notice of Intent to Dismiss in January 2026, flagging three jurisdictional problems: timing, an overlapping civil claim, and absolute privilege.
It was the last of those that did the most work in the decision.
Absolute privilege, O'Malley explained, is the long-standing common law rule that protects parties, counsel, and witnesses from being sued over what they say or do in connection with legal proceedings. It is designed, the Tribunal noted, so that "persons participating in legal proceedings can pursue their rights without fear of consequences." Motive does not matter. Bad faith does not matter. Even alleged Code breaches do not pierce it.
That meant Co-operators' conduct during the Small Claims litigation - including how it weighed Kemp's disability arguments at the settlement conference - could not form the basis of a human rights claim. The Tribunal also rejected Kemp's argument that the January 2025 settlement conference amounted to a fresh, discrete act of discrimination rather than the lingering effect of earlier decisions.
The decision also dealt briefly with what came after the litigation. Kemp had emailed the insurer's counsel asking that the denial be revisited in light of his disability. Counsel replied that the claim had been resolved on a full and final basis. The Tribunal found no facts tying the refusal to reopen the file to any Code-protected ground, calling the assertion too thin to ground jurisdiction.
The application was dismissed in full.
For Canadian insurers and claims teams, the takeaway is practical: positions taken during litigation - including settlement conferences - remain insulated from human rights scrutiny, even where a claimant raises disability mid-stream. Post-litigation correspondence, however, still needs to be handled with care.
