{"id":5199,"date":"2017-11-22T20:26:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T01:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.millerthomson.com\/automatic-vicarious-liability-owner-applies-accidents-highways\/"},"modified":"2024-09-16T11:05:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:05:02","slug":"automatic-vicarious-liability-owner-applies-accidents-highways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.millerthomson.com\/en\/insights\/insurance\/automatic-vicarious-liability-owner-applies-accidents-highways\/","title":{"rendered":"Automatic Vicarious Liability of Owner Only Applies to Accidents on Highways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the first lessons that any student of personal injury law learns is that an owner of a motor vehicle is vicariously liable for the negligence of the vehicle\u2019s operator.\u00a0 This vicarious liability is imposed by s. 192(2) of the <em>Highway Traffic Act<\/em>, which states:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 90px;\">192 (2) The owner of a motor vehicle or street car is liable for loss or damage sustained by any person by reason of negligence in the operation of the motor vehicle or street car on a highway, unless the motor vehicle or street car was without the owner\u2019s consent in the possession of some person other than the owner or the owner\u2019s chauffeur.<\/p>\n<p>Built into the section is a broad exception: the owner is only vicariously liable if the operator had consent to possess the vehicle.\u00a0 This exception has led to a great deal of litigation, culminating in the Ontario Court of Appeal\u2019s decision in <em>Fernandes v. Araujo<\/em>, 2015 ONCA 571, where it was held that vicarious liability will follow as long as the owner consented to the operator possessing the vehicle, regardless of any conditions that the owner placed on possession.<\/p>\n<p>There is also a less obvious exception built into s. 192(2): the negligence of the operator must have occurred \u201con a highway\u201d.\u00a0 Where the negligence of the operator does not occur on a highway, s. 192(2) does not apply, and the owner is not vicariously liable.\u00a0 This was most recently affirmed at the Ontario Court of Appeal in <em>Jaffer v. Pardhan<\/em>, 2017 ONCA 612, where the accident occurred in a laneway in a private parking lot.\u00a0 For further discussion on the definition of a \u201chighway\u201d, <em>Becamon v. Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company<\/em>, 2009 ONCA 113, <em>Persaud v. Suedat<\/em>, 2012 ONSC 5232 (\u201c<em>Persaud<\/em>\u201d), and <em>Ladouceur v. Zimmerman<\/em>, [2009] O.J. No. 4777 (\u201c<em>Ladouceur<\/em>\u201d) are instructive.<\/p>\n<p>From an insurance perspective, this distinction is often irrelevant, as the vehicle owner\u2019s insurer may still be obligated to defend and indemnify the vehicle operator.\u00a0 However, in any case where coverage is being denied to the vehicle operator, the distinction becomes important, as the plaintiff may be forced to look to her OPCF44 carrier for recovery.\u00a0 This was the situation which occurred in both <em>Persaud <\/em>and <em>Ladouceur<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the first lessons that any student of personal injury law learns is that an owner of a motor vehicle is vicariously liable for the negligence of the vehicle\u2019s operator.\u00a0 This vicarious liability is imposed by s. 192(2) of the Highway Traffic Act, which states: 192 (2) The owner of a motor vehicle or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14367,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[525],"insight-format":[418],"class_list":["post-5199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insurance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Automatic Vicarious Liability of Owner Only Applies to Accidents on Highways | Miller Thomson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.millerthomson.com\/en\/insights\/insurance\/automatic-vicarious-liability-owner-applies-accidents-highways\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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