A Nova Scotia court awarded $435,000 on a hit-and-run brain injury claim that sought up to $3.2 million under the victim's own policy.
The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia released its decision on June 26, 2026, in a dispute that hinged entirely on money. Liability was never contested. Everyone agreed an unidentified vehicle was fully at fault when it struck the claimant in a marked crosswalk in a Bedford South retail parking lot on November 13, 2021, then fled. Neither the car nor its driver was found.
Because it was a hit-and-run, the claimant had no at-fault driver to sue. She turned to Section D of her own automobile policy with Primmum Insurance Company, the coverage that responds to injuries caused by an uninsured and unidentified automobile. The court stressed that Primmum was not standing in for the phantom driver's insurer. It was answering under the claimant's own policy, whose Section D capped exposure at $500,000.
That left only damages to fight over. The claimant, 41 when she was hit, sought between roughly $2.5 million and $3.2 million. Both sides' neurologists agreed she had suffered a traumatic brain injury - a basilar skull fracture, bilateral frontal and temporal lobe contusions, occipital lobe contrecoup injuries and intracranial bleeding - leaving her with permanent loss of smell, impaired taste, headaches, dizziness and lasting cognitive and emotional symptoms. She spent 10 days in hospital.
The court awarded $435,000: $175,000 in general damages, $200,000 for diminished earning capacity, $35,000 for future care and $25,000 for loss of valuable services. Prejudgment interest runs at 3 per cent, calculated simply from the date of the accident.
For claims professionals, the future-care ruling is the story. The claimant sought more than $1 million for future care, resting on an occupational therapist's report and a supporting financial calculation. The court had serious problems with that evidence, finding many of its assumptions overstated or unsupported by any medical opinion. It pointed to medications no physician had actually recommended and a case manager none of the experts endorsed. The award came in at $35,000.
Primmum also raised a mitigation-style point that adjusters will recognize. The claimant's policy entitled her to $50,000 in approved Section B expenses, including psychiatric care and physiotherapy, yet she had accessed only $662.27 of it. Paying now for treatments she had not pursued, the insurer argued, risked squandering. The court called the concern legitimate but refused to hold it against her, noting she was a single mother working to support two sons and had not been warned of the risks of returning to work early.
That early return proved decisive. Although the claimant went back to work within months and her income actually climbed, the court accepted the insurer's neurologist's view that the rushed return was a "missed opportunity" for recovery. It found a real and substantial possibility of ongoing damage to her earning capacity, and held she had not failed to mitigate.
