Recoskie v. Vanderheuvel et al., 2025 ONSC 5856
Reading time: 3 minutes (approx.)
By: Sarah Richard
This case arises from an accident that occurred on April 25, 2015, in Renfrew County in Ontario. The accident took place on a narrow gravel road with no marked center line. One of the named defendants, Vandenheuvel, was uninsured; therefore, the Plaintiff’s insurer was added to this litigation.
Co-operators General Insurance Company (the Plaintiff’s insurer) was involved given one of the driver’s was uninsured, while Defendant Prince was an insured driver. If the Defendant Prince was found to be even 1% responsible for the collision, his insurance policy would pay the entirety of the settlement while Co-Operators would pay nothing. Alternatively, should Prince be found not liable, Co-Operators would bear the responsibility of paying the entirety of the settlement.
Co-Operators claimed the Defendant Prince must have been driving too close to the center line or over it and was travelling at an excessive speed.
The Defendant Prince denied all liability. He argued that he was driving well within his lane, at an appropriate speed and did everything he could to avoid the collision when the uninsured driver crossed into his lane.
The two legal questions that were addressed in this case to determine liability were as follows:
- Was the insured driver, Defendant Prince, driving over or too close to the center line, thereby contributing to the accident?
- Was the insured driver, Defendant Prince, travelling at an excessive speed for the conditions, leaving insufficient time to react to an emergency?
Regarding the first question, the court accepted the Defendant Prince’s evidence which included an expert in accident reconstruction stating that he was driving within his lane. The court rejected the Co-Operators’s argument that even if the Defendant Prince didn’t cross the center line, but was close to it, he could be found liable. This was rejected because there was enough room on the road for both vehicles if the uninsured vehicle had not crossed the line.
Regarding the second question, the Defendant Prince was driving below the speed limit and there was no evidence that travelling at a slower speed would have changed the situation. The court emphasized that liability cannot be imposed without evidence of causation and, in this case, there was no evidence presented on how reduced speed would have changed the outcome.
The court concluded that the uninsured driver crossed the center line which caused the collision. Further, the court concluded that the Defendant Prince was not liable for the accident and dismissed the case against him.
