A Quebec insurer came close to losing its subrogation claim - not on its merits, but because no-one told it the clock had started ticking again.
In a decision filed April 2, 2026, the Court of Quebec sided with Sécurité Nationale Compagnie d'assurance in a procedural fight that carries a pointed message for claims professionals: when your file depends on someone else's litigation, staying in the loop is not optional - and the other side has a duty to help.
The dispute traces back to the spring of 2019, when two losses struck the residence of Sécurité Nationale's insureds, Ronald Santiago and Mahnoosh Farhadi. The insurer paid out on the claims and, in November 2021, launched a subrogatory action against Constructions et Rénovations DIR Inc. and SMR Experts Inc., alleging construction faults caused the damage. DIR, for its part, brought a warranty claim against Habitat-Concept Gaétan Gagnon.
Things stalled quickly. In May 2022, the Court suspended the case after SMR brought to its attention that the insureds had already sued various parties - including DIR, SMR, and Habitat - in Superior Court over related losses. The suspension would hold until a final judgment or definitive settlement was reached in those proceedings.
The catch: Sécurité Nationale was not a party to those Superior Court files. It had no seat at the table and no direct window into what was happening. Over the next several years, its lawyer chased updates from opposing counsel. In October 2024, DIR's lawyer said the settlement was "far from being finalized," with corrective construction work still pending. By July 2025, the message was that the work was done but paperwork was still being wrapped up. By October 2025, Sécurité Nationale's counsel pressed for reactivation of the file, and DIR's counsel acknowledged the case would need to move forward.
Yet when a declaration of satisfaction of judgment was filed in the Superior Court files on December 1, 2025, nobody told Sécurité Nationale. Its lawyer discovered the filing through a check of the court record on January 23, 2026.
SMR seized on the gap. It argued the suspension had actually lifted back on September 3, 2024 - the date the Superior Court endorsed the original transaction - and that Sécurité Nationale, having done nothing since, should be treated as having abandoned its claim.
Justice Luc Huppé was not persuaded. He pointed out that the parties to the Superior Court files had themselves signed a partial settlement notice after September 2024, explicitly excluding DIR and describing the matter as only partially resolved. The September 2024 transaction, the Court found, was not a definitive settlement.
More importantly, Justice Huppé held that the suspension could not end before Sécurité Nationale actually knew about the triggering event. That knowledge, he wrote, was an implicit condition of the suspension order. To rule otherwise would mean an insurer could lose its filing deadline without ever knowing it had restarted - no matter how diligently it monitored the situation.
The Court also pointed to Article 20 of Quebec's Code of Civil Procedure, which requires parties to cooperate by keeping each other informed. The other parties, the Court found, fell short of that obligation.
Sécurité Nationale was found not to be in default. The Court extended the inscription deadline to August 3, 2026, with costs against the defendants.
