{"id":390,"date":"2007-12-05T15:35:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-05T20:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cavanaghwilliams.com\/blawg\/?p=390"},"modified":"2007-12-05T15:35:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-05T20:35:00","slug":"ca-says-go-kart-is-not-a-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"C.A. Says Go-Kart in Pineland Amusements Is Not an “Automobile”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"go-kart.jpg\"\u00a0Today, the Court of Appeal released its decision in\u00a0Adams v.<\/em> <\/strong><\/a>Pineland Amusements Ltd.<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>The first line of the decision sums up the ruling: “This appeal decides that a go-kart operated on a private track is not an ‘automobile’ within the meaning of the standard Ontario automobile insurance contract.”<\/p>\n

In the decision appealed from, the plaintiff had been injured while operating a go-kart on a private track. He alleged that he had lost control of his go-kart after colliding with another go-kart being driven by his father. He sued both his father and the operator of the go-kart track. The father, in turn, joined\u00a0his automobile insurer in the suit, claiming that it insured him against his son’s claim.<\/p>\n

On a motion by the insurer, Kingsway General Insurance Company, Mr. Justice Roydon Kealey\u00a0held in favour of the father and ruled that Kingsway owed a duty to defend. He determined that a go-kart operated on a private track was an “automobile” within the meaning of the Ontario Insurance Act <\/em>and that accordingly, liability coverage was available for the go-kart driver under the latter’s\u00a0auto policy. The basis of Justice Kealey’s ruling was that the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act <\/em>invokes the definition of “motor vehicles” contained in the Highway Traffic Act<\/em>. The latter definition is worded broadly enough to include a go-kart. Although it would not be lawful to operate a go-kart on a highway, it is physically possible to do so. Thus, Justice Kealey concluded that if operated on a highway, a go-kart would have to be insured and that therefore, it was an “automobile” for purposes of the Insurance Act<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeal overturned the decision. Kingsway had argued that because a go-kart could never be driven lawfully on a highway, the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act<\/em> should be interpreted as not applying to it. However, the Court of Appeal was not prepared to go this far.<\/p>\n

Instead, it based its decision on Copley v. Kerr Farms Ltd.<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, one of its own decisions from 2002. In that case, the question was whether a tomato wagon was an “automobile” for purposes of the Insurance Act<\/em>. The Court had found that although it was possible to take a tomato wagon on the highway, the accident in this case had occurred in a farmer’s field and that “there was no requirement for the defendant to have [the tomato wagon] insured ‘at the time and place where the accident occurred’.” Thus, the question was not whether the go-kart would have been an “automobile” for insurance purposes if the accident had occurred on a highway, but whether it had to be insured at the time and in the circumstances of the actual accident that had taken place. The Court held that it did not.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Today, the Court of Appeal released its decision in\u00a0Adams v. Pineland Amusements Ltd. The first line of the decision sums up the ruling: “This appeal decides that a go-kart operated on a private track is not an ‘automobile’ within the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto","category-insurance-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cavanagh.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}