Insurer Conscience: Absent

Now that's a bit of stunning news. What a revelation. What dishonesty. What a travesty. Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Co. has a very convenient exit to committing to honour their insurance responsibility in a traffic accident caused by a drunk driver that took the lives of two people. A man and his wife who had been out for an evening of entertainment, standing at a bus stop when a driver plowed into them, killing the husband, the wife dying four days later.

There are now three orphaned children, three young girls whom fate decreed that they suffer an extreme tragedy of untenable proportions in the loss of their parents. On the positive side, the three girls have a supportive, emotionally- and practically-involved extended family. It is almost a year since Leo Paul and Sherianne Regnier died after Simon Banke's vehicle struck them. Yet the tragedy that orphaned the girls threatens to victimize them yet again.

They were to have received a $800,000 payout from insurance which might have helped enormously to ensure their future education would include university and a head-start into security and maturity for the girls, being cared for by relatives. Raising ten, fourteen and sixteen-year-olds comes with emotional and material costs which constitute an additional burden for people without extraordinary financial means.

But, thanks to government legislation permitting insurance companies to get away with citing criminal offence as an opt-out clause, permitting them to pay out no more than $200,000 as the statutory minimum in the Province of Ontario, the expectation is - verified by a lawyer for the insurance company - that this is all that the girls and their relatives can anticipate receiving. They have the option of launching a private lawsuit against the driver.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada states: "As a matter of public policy, individuals suffering severe damages as a result of motor vehicle accidents are generally entitled to the minimum statutory liability limits ($200,000) regardless of whether the insured driver's conduct has breached a condition of the policy (i.e. street racing) thereby rendering the policy itself void. The injured party can still recover any excess amounts against the driver personally."

So good luck suing an individual who is experiencing his own demonic problems with addictions and who, as a result of that and extremely bad judgement in choosing to drink and drive, appears to have a fairly dismal future before him, rather excluding the potential for hugely gainful employment that might allow for him to pay out of wages what a lawsuit might award the three girls.

Does it make any kind of sense that victims of those who choose to drink and drive are not adequately compensated because of the criminal behaviour of the very person who victimized them to begin with? Why in heaven's name would the provincial government lend itself to this kind of insane reckoning to allow insurers to shirk their responsibility?