A certified class covers those with catastrophic injuries in motor vehicle accidents
In class proceedings involving people who purchased compulsory vehicle insurance or suffered catastrophic injuries in motor vehicle accidents, the British Columbia Supreme Court reserved a further four-day period to hear arguments on potentially expanding the scope of certification.
In Rorison v Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, 2025 BCSC 1597, the defendant Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) had a long-standing arrangement to pay the defendant provincial government for basic medical care for those injured in motor vehicle accidents, even if BC’s publicly funded medical services plan (MSP) already covered those expenses.
In their original March 2020 civil claim, the plaintiffs assailed the arrangement’s legality. They alleged that the unnecessary MSP payments to BC wrongfully increased insurance costs for everyone who purchased compulsory vehicle insurance from ICBC and amounted to an unconstitutional tax.
The plaintiffs also argued that the MSP payments wrongfully decreased the amount of other medical and rehabilitation benefits available from ICBC.
In October 2020, the plaintiffs applied for certification for:
- the ratepayer class: a class of people who purchased compulsory vehicle insurance from ICBC
- the accident victim class: a smaller class of people who suffered catastrophic injuries in motor vehicle accidents
The plaintiffs proposed three sets of common issues – one for the ratepayer class, one for the accident victim class, and one for both.
After certification, the parties realized that they disagreed on the issue of whether the certification covered all health care payments or only payments for physicians’ services.
The plaintiffs filed an amended civil claim in February 2022. They applied for approval of their proposed notice program or leave for amendments to clarify the allegations advanced via the class proceeding.
The plaintiffs acknowledged that expanding the claim to include remittances for all healthcare costs would increase their claim by hundreds of millions of dollars, and remittances for inpatient and outpatient hospital services likely exceeded remittances for medical practitioner services.
The defendants countered that the plaintiffs’ proposal effectively widened the certified claim’s scope and required another certification hearing to verify that the proposed amendments met the requirements of BC’s Class Proceedings Act, 1996.
Scope may be broadened
Before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the appointed case management judge for the certified class proceeding reserved four more days to hear arguments on a potential expansion of the scope of certification.
The court ruled that the claim’s language did not support the plaintiffs’ position. The court explained that the references to “physicians,” “medical practitioners,” and “MSP” suggested that the claim pertained to payments for doctors’ services.
First, the plaintiffs claimed that they learned at some point that the annual financial data under paragraph 26 of the claim included payments for medical services beyond what physicians delivered.
The court responded that “remittances,” as defined in paragraph 26, flowed logically and naturally from the language in paragraphs 24 and 25, which referred only to reimbursements for “visits to physicians” and “the services of medical practitioners.”
Next, the plaintiffs found no need for any additional assessment of the certification for the proposed amendments because the cause of action continued to be unconstitutional taxation. The court rejected this argument.
The court held that the plaintiffs’ proposed expansion of the claim beyond MSP remittances would amount to certifying a new cause of action, given that it would fundamentally change the underlying factual situation and the case’s complexion regarding financial exposure and the necessary evidence.
Regarding BC’s assertion that the expansion could fragment the claim, the court said the defendants should have an opportunity to offer evidence and arguments to help it evaluate this issue.
The court noted that the certification process could not alter the underlying claim’s character. Instead, the process extracted issues existing in the pleadings for the court to assess in a single common trial.
