Ruling says reasonable efforts taken to ascertain unknown driver’s identity
The British Columbia Court of Appeal set aside the dismissal of actions against the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) for injuries caused by a hit-and-run accident involving a stolen vehicle whose unidentified and unidentifiable driver had fled the scene.
The incident in Fearon v. Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, 2026 BCCA 81, occurred in February 2019 at about four in the morning. An unknown driver stole a pickup truck, ran a stop sign, hit the motor vehicle occupied by the appellants, and fled the scene on foot.
Right after the collision, RCMP officers investigated the crime involving the stolen vehicle. They used police dogs to track the thief, looked for video cameras in the area, and forensically examined the truck. Fairly quickly, they concluded that they could not identify the fugitive and closed the investigation.
Unable to hold the truck owner responsible, the appellants brought actions against ICBC as a nominal defendant under s. 24(1) of BC’s Insurance (Vehicle) Act, 1996.
On December 17, 2024, a trial judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed the appellants’ actions against the respondent ICBC. He held that the appellants:
- failed to make all reasonable efforts to ascertain the unknown driver’s identity as s. 24(5) of the Insurance (Vehicle) Act required
- unreasonably waited over a year before taking “minimally burdensome steps”
- only embarked on their own investigative steps in March 2020 by posting ads around the neighbourhood to seek witnesses
The appellants appealed the dismissal.
Reasonable efforts taken
The Court of Appeal for British Columbia allowed the appeal and remitted the appellants’ actions to the BC Supreme Court for an assessment of their damages.
The appeal court noted that the cases cited did not involve circumstances like those involved in this case – an unknown person stole and operated a vehicle, leading to police officers’ unsuccessful criminal investigation.
The appeal court saw a legal error on the trial judge’s part. The appeal court determined that he:
- imposed artificial constraints on what should have been a holistic assessment
- bifurcated the analysis between the events that occurred at the scene of the accident and the steps taken afterward
- examined the reasonableness of the appellants’ steps without considering them in the context of the police investigation
- relied on what judges had characterized as “all reasonable steps” in very different cases, rather than performing the case-specific assessment required under the law
The appeal court ruled that the appellants complied with s. 24(5) by making all reasonable efforts to ascertain the identity of the unknown driver whose identity was not ascertainable. The appeal court explained that the appellants:
- were unlikely to produce any results by taking additional steps following the RCMP’s failure to identify the unknown driver after a thorough investigation
- reasonably relied on the police officers, rather than conducting what would have constituted a criminal investigation of their own
