What happened: An Uber passenger's accident benefits claim was dismissed after she waited seven months to notify the insurer of a February 2024 collision.
Who's involved: Definity Insurance Company and a passenger in an Uber vehicle.
What's at stake: Multiple denied treatment plans totalling more than $7,400, plus a potential award for unreasonably withholding benefits.
Why it matters: The decision reinforces the hard consequences of Ontario's seven-day accident reporting rule and shows how credibility gaps under sworn questioning can sink an entire claim.
Where it stands: Final order - application dismissed. Released October 8, 2026.
It took seven months, a contradicted story, and zero medical records to lose an entire accident benefits claim in Ontario.
An Uber passenger who was hurt when her rideshare vehicle was struck by another car in February 2024 has had her statutory accident benefits application thrown out by an Ontario tribunal. Her offence: she did not notify the insurer, Definity Insurance Company, within the seven-day window the law requires after a motor vehicle accident.
The passenger did not file her application for benefits until September 26, 2024 - more than seven months after the collision. In a decision released October 8, 2026, the tribunal found the applicant had no reasonable explanation for the delay and barred her from proceeding on every substantive issue. That included whether her injuries fell within a $3,500 treatment cap for minor injuries, three denied treatment plans worth more than $7,400 combined, and a claim that the insurer had unreasonably withheld benefits.
In her written submissions, the applicant argued she was a student, new to Canada, and simply did not know she had legal rights after a rideshare accident. She said she tried repeatedly to contact Uber through its app and by phone, but customer service offered no help. She also argued Uber should have notified Definity under the terms of its policy, and that Definity itself knew about the collision "but remained silent."
The tribunal was not persuaded.
At a sworn examination held on December 17, 2024, the applicant told a different story. She confirmed she had been working full-time in a sales role at the time of the accident and had already completed a year-long diploma program in data analytics. She went back to work two days after the collision.
That mattered. The tribunal found she had not shown she was unable to pursue a claim because she was a student or new to the country - the two pillars of her delay argument. And the claim that she had tried to get insurance information from Uber? No supporting evidence was offered. The tribunal noted pointedly that written arguments are not the same thing as evidence.
The applicant also argued that physical and psychological injuries from the accident contributed to the delay. The tribunal found no evidence she sought any medical treatment in the seven months between the collision and her benefits application. She said she lacked provincial health coverage during that period - but the tribunal noted that even after she obtained that coverage in November 2024, she did not see a doctor for another seven months, until June 2025.
Her first contact with a physiotherapy clinic came on September 26, 2024. The same day she filed her application.
The applicant pointed to a 2025 Divisional Court decision, Hussein v. Intact Insurance Company, arguing that Definity had a duty to reach out and tell her she could claim benefits. The tribunal distinguished that case: in Hussein, the insurer knew about the accident within a day. Here, Definity said it had no knowledge of the collision until it received the application seven months later. The applicant offered no evidence to the contrary.
Every explanation the applicant put forward was weighed against the well-established legal test for what counts as a "reasonable explanation" for a late filing. The law is clear: not knowing the rules, on its own, is not enough.
The result: a complete bar and a dismissed application. Every treatment plan, every benefit, every claim - gone.
For claims teams handling rideshare accident files, the decision is a pointed reminder that Ontario's seven-day reporting clock starts at the collision, not when the claimant finds a lawyer or figures out which insurer to call - and that a sworn examination that contradicts written submissions can be the single most damaging piece of evidence on file.
