When a court awards damages under the Supreme Court of Canada's newly recognized tort of intimate partner violence, somebody has to pay – and the question of whether an insurer is on the hook is one the industry will need to answer sooner rather than later.
In a landmark 6-3 decision, the court recognized the tort of intimate partner violence, giving survivors a broader and more defined legal pathway to pursue damages for coercive control, financial abuse, isolation and intimidation – conduct that existing torts failed to adequately capture. The decision, which arose from Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, is being described as a historic shift in Canadian tort law.
For most cases, the initial coverage analysis is straightforward. Steven Abramson, managing partner at Harper Grey LLP, said the standard exclusions in personal lines policies would likely do most of the work.
"Most personal lines (homeowner or renter) policies have exclusions for injury to anyone insured by the policy and injury to anyone who lives with you," Abramson said. In the typical scenario of a married or cohabiting couple, that household exclusion alone would likely end the coverage analysis. The intentional or criminal acts exclusion adds a second layer. "Intimate partner violence would likely fall into both of those categories," he said.
Where the analysis gets more nuanced is in relationships where the parties do not share a household. Abramson noted that the household exclusion would likely not apply to couples in a relationship who maintain separate residences. In those cases, the intentional acts exclusion would still likely apply, but the coverage question becomes less automatic and may depend on specific policy language and the facts of the case.
"It seems quite unlikely that there would be coverage for claims for intimate partner violence," Abramson said, "but one always has to review the pleadings and the policy to determine whether coverage applies."
Rohan Haté, principal of ZSRH Litigation Lawyers LLP, practises on both the plaintiff and defence sides of insurance litigation – and he said the industry should not treat this as the end of the analysis.
"This is the question that will generate the most coverage litigation in the next 24 months," Haté said of the insurance implications.
The starting point, he noted, is the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Non-Marine Underwriters, Lloyd's of London v. Scalera, which held that intentional torts in the intimate context fall outside standard homeowner's liability coverage. The new tort's second element – that the defendant must have intentionally engaged in the abusive conduct – sits squarely within that framework. "There is no negligence framing available," Haté said.
But he flagged a signal in the majority's reasons that coverage teams should not overlook. The court expressly distinguished Scalera and referenced a 2025 BC Court of Appeal decision – something it did not need to do if it considered the coverage question settled. "That is a signal that the indemnity question remains genuinely open at the SCC level," Haté said.
More immediately, he said, the duty to defend is a live issue even where indemnity will ultimately be denied. The duty to defend is broader than the duty to indemnify – it is triggered on the face of the pleadings, not on the ultimate merits. "Plaintiff's counsel should be tendering to homeowner's and umbrella policies and forcing insurers to apply for declaratory relief if they want to decline," Haté said. "Defence counsel and insurers should not be reaching for the standard denial letter without case-specific analysis."
Haté also flagged a structural problem with existing policy language. Standard intentional act exclusions were drafted before coercive control existed as an independent legal wrong. Some forms of IPV conduct – financial surveillance, isolation, restriction of communication – do not map neatly onto the physical or psychiatric injury that the exclusion's original logic was built around. "Plaintiffs will argue that not every form of IPV conduct automatically triggers the intentional act exclusion," he said.
He said insurers should be considering express IPV exclusion language that tracks the Ahluwalia elements, and that reserves on any active file with IPV-style allegations need to be revisited now. "The Ahluwalia damages framework will pull awards upward," he said, with realistic compensatory and aggravated damages in a typical case likely landing between $150,000 and $400,000.
EPLI carriers should also be paying attention, Haté added. The majority's reasoning about patterned conduct as an independent wrong will inevitably be tested in workplace harassment claims – particularly where there is also an intimate relationship involved.
"Ahluwalia is a genuinely consequential decision," Haté said. "It opens a coverage and pleading-strategy front that has not yet been worked out. The next 18 to 24 months of appellate decisions… will be the ones to watch."
