Ontario's Licence Appeal Tribunal has backed a Security National Insurance Company denial letter, ruling it never had to name the Schedule section it relied on.

The case started with an accident on January 8, 2023. The claimant sought funding for physiotherapy under Ontario's Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule, but Security National turned down the request on March 23, 2023. The two sides argued their positions through a written hearing rather than in person. The insurer's letter told her she still fell under the Minor Injury Guideline and could file an OCF-23 to keep getting treatment under that funding cap in the meantime. She waited close to two months before doing so. When the case first reached the tribunal, it found the denial was allowed under section 38(5) of the Schedule, a type of refusal that section 38(6) makes final and unreviewable. It also decided she wasn't owed an award or interest. That decision came down April 24, 2026.

On May 14, 2026, she pushed back, asking the tribunal to reconsider. Her argument: the denial letter never actually said the insurer was relying on section 38(5), so it shouldn't get the shield section 38(6) provides. Without that detail spelled out, she argued, she was missing the one piece of information she needed to decide whether to dispute the denial or accept it as final. She leaned on the Supreme Court of Canada's consumer-protection reasoning in Smith v. Co-operators General Insurance Co., and argued that a comparison the tribunal drew to a different section shouldn't have mattered.

Vice-Chair Craig Mazerolle wasn't persuaded. Neither section 38(5) nor section 38(6) requires an insurer to spell out which provision it's using, he found - unlike other parts of the Schedule that do carry that kind of notice requirement. The March 23 letter had already pointed her toward an OCF-23 for interim MIG treatment, which he said gave her what she needed to respond. “The Tribunal did not err by foregoing this kind of formalistic notice requirement,” he wrote. Even setting aside the disputed comparison, he added, the outcome would have stayed the same.

Reconsideration has a high bar to clear, Mazerolle noted, and it isn't a do-over for a party who simply disagrees with the result. The request was dismissed, leaving the original decision in place.

The ruling leaves Security National's original notice practice intact - a denial letter that points a claimant toward the right form can do the job, even without spelling out the exact section behind it.