Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2006 16:27:16

From: Steve Hedley

Subject: Punitive damages for negligence

Can people with local knowledge say whether the dissenting judge is correct to assert (at para [131]) that the punitive damages will be covered by the standard road insurance policy (subject to the policy's limit)? If so, it is hard to see an answer to Blair JA's point that the award "punishes" not the defendant, but rather the entire group of those who pay for insurance. It also makes it problematical whether the award "deters" anyone from anything. That really only leaves "denunciation" as the object of the remedy (see para [59]); which is, to put it mildly, only weakly justified in the majority judgments.

Steve Hedley
Faculty of Law, University College Cork

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From: Vaughan Black
Sent: 07 November 2006 15:51
Subject: ODG: punitive damages for negligence

I see that the Ontario Court of Appeal has just approved a punitive damages award in a negligence case -- a rare occurrence in Canada -- though they trimmed the amount from what had been awarded at trial.

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