(Montreal) A dental clinic in Montreal has filed a class action against its insurance company to reimburse its loss of income incurred during the confinement of the first wave of the pandemic.
Posted at 12:35 p.m.
The Boulevard Galeries d’Anjou Dental Center is claiming nearly $342,000, plus interest, from L’Unique General Insurance, a subsidiary of Beneva (formerly La Capitale).
This is the amount that the clinic estimates to have lost between March and May 2020, when dentists in Quebec had to cease their activities, with the exception of emergency operations, following a government decree in order to to fight COVID-19.
The insurer refused to compensate for these losses under the “Insurance for operating losses-real loss suffered” owned by the Anjou clinic.
The class action also aims to obtain claims for other dental practices holding this insurance policy and having also suffered a refusal to cover the losses caused by the reduction or cessation of their activities due to the pandemic.
The legal tussle stems from a divergent interpretation of this guarantee which compensates for certain losses resulting from the interruption of business “that has become unavoidable”.
L’Unique argues that neither the goodwill of the business nor the clinic are insured property under the policy, according to the Superior Court judgment authorizing the class action request.
The insurer also argues that the guarantee only applies if there is damage to the property which gives rise to the operating loss.
For its part, the dental center mentions that the “police vocabulary is very broad”, that the slowdown in activities “affected the goods described in the special conditions” and that “its request is not frivolous”, can we read in the judgment.
According to the clinic, the warranty did not include any exclusions regarding a pandemic, virus or infectious disease.
Ambiguities
Other dental clinics in Quebec also wanted to obtain authorization to institute a class action in two separate applications against their insurance company which refused to compensate for business interruption during the first months of COVID-19.
However, their actions against Desjardins, Promutuel and La Capitale were dismissed by the court.
The Superior Court accepted the case of the dental center of Anjou because of the “ambiguities” contained in the coverage of the policy of L’Unique, unlike other insurance companies.
“It’s an interesting judgment because it’s the only class action that has been authorized. […] This is not the same language used by other insurers, which require, for example, the destruction of property located in the dentistry office,” commented one of the lawyers representing the class action, Ms.and Robert Kugler, at The Canadian Press.
He mentions that other types of companies have also wanted to bring a class action against their insurers in the same context, but in vain.
L’Unique claims that the content of its warranty is identical to that of Promutuel. The judge rather mentioned that the Promutuel policy speaks “obviously” of physical property, “which excludes the possibility that an attack on the “business” (business) itself is covered”.
“Added to this is the reality that the interruption must have been caused by material damage directly caused to one of these physical assets,” he continues.
The insurer attempted to contest the authorization of the class action. The Court of Appeal denied his motion last fall.
The class action was therefore filed in mid-January. The dates of the trial, which will decide in particular whether L’Unique must compensate the dental centers or not, remain to be determined.
The number of dental establishments that could benefit from the class action is still unknown. Mand Kugler also invites companies potentially affected to contact his firm Kugler Kandestin to find out more about the action.
As the case is currently before the courts, L’Unique does not wish to comment, but “challenges the action brought against it and notably raises the lack of coverage for the damages claimed,” the company told The Canadian Press by email. .
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This article was produced with the financial support of the Facebook and The Canadian Press Scholarships for News