What happened: An Ontario tribunal ordered repayment of income replacement benefits paid after a claimant returned to work.
Who's involved: Security National Insurance Company and an accident benefits claimant.
What's at stake: $8,837.95 in overpaid benefits, plus interest.
Why it matters: The insurer's own calculation error didn't block repayment, because its notice and math held up.
Where it stands: Decided by Ontario's Licence Appeal Tribunal on September 24, 2026.
The news and the first payment landed on the same day.
On September 29, 2023, Security National Insurance Company started paying a claimant her income replacement benefit. That same day, her representative told the insurer she had gone back to work on August 9.
The payments were never adjusted. Ontario's Licence Appeal Tribunal has now ruled the insurer is entitled to $8,837.95 back, plus interest.
She was in a car accident on June 22, 2023. Security National set her benefit at $400 a week from June 29, paid every two weeks from September 29, with a lump sum for the earlier weeks on October 27.
She was already working modified, part-time hours. Paystubs came with the September notice, and more followed in February 2024.
Security National didn't subtract her earnings from the benefit. On May 6, 2024, it sent her a repayment notice flagging the miscalculation.
The insurer's own breakdown tells the story one pay period at a time.
From August 9 to 23, 2023, Security National paid $857.14. Once her wages were counted, she was entitled to $14.27.
For most of the pay periods that followed, the right number was zero.
Ontario's accident benefits rules cover this exact situation. Under section 52 of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule, anyone paid a benefit because of an insurer's error has to return it, as long as the insurer sends notice of the amount and only reaches back 12 months.
The tribunal said the May 2024 letter did the job. It named the error, gave the $8,837.95 total and listed the payments behind it, all made within that 12-month window.
The claimant's side argued the overpayment came from the insurer's "lack of diligence in adjusting the claim," as the decision sums up her position. It also said the notice had no calculations and the amount was never proven.
The vice-chair agreed with part of that, writing that "diligence in the adjusting of the claim may have created conditions through which the overpayment never would have occurred."
Still, no authorities were offered to show why that should change the repayment. And the numbers held up. The tribunal ran the calculations itself, landed on the same $8,837.95, and noted the claimant offered no figures of her own.
She also pointed to an earlier case, Security National Insurance Company v. Bingham, where an insured didn't have to repay because the insurer couldn't prove the amount. This time the math was in the evidence, so that case didn't help her.
The tribunal even tidied up its own paperwork along the way, rewording the interest issue to cite the right section of the Schedule. Then it granted the application in full: $8,837.95, plus interest.
An unadjusted IRB can still be recovered under section 52, provided the repayment letter goes out within 12 months of the payments and the pay-period math survives the tribunal running it again.
The decision was released September 24, 2026. It does not say whether either party plans to seek reconsideration or appeal.
