Dog jumps out of the window of a parked van and attacks a pedestrian. Is it an auto accident?

It’s not an ‘auto accident’ when a dog jumps out of a parked van’s window and attacks a passerby, causing injuries, the Ontario Licence Appeal Tribunal has ruled.

Virginia Voll, 75 at the time, was walking on a paved path in a park near her home in May 2024, when she came upon the parked van.

Suddenly, a dog leaped out of the van’s open window and attacked her. The dog bit Voll’s right arm and hand and knocked her to the ground. Reportedly, the dog’s owner, who was asleep in the van at the time, woke up and removed the dog.

An ambulance took Voll to the hospital, where she underwent emergency wound repair and treatment, followed by a prolonged recovery involving hand therapy, orthopaedic intervention, and attendant care support. She suffered soft-tissue and nerve injuries, including a large laceration and partial amputation of her right small finger, a bite wound to her forearm and subsequent functional impairments of her dominant hand.

She told the LAT the incident left her with permanent loss of function, chronic pain, and psychological distress.

She applied for accident benefits, claiming her injuries were the result of an ‘auto accident.’

Definity denied the claim, arguing the incident was not an ‘auto accident’ under the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule. It also said Voll didn’t notify the auto insurer about her intention to apply for accident benefits within the mandatory seven days after the incident occurred.

Voll maintained the dog attack was an auto accident.’ She argued before the tribunal that the van stored and transported the dog with an open window, setting in motion the sequence of events that led to the dog attacking her.

“She submits that when a dog is transported in a vehicle, it must be treated under the law as cargo and the resulting injuries were therefore part of the vehicle’s operation, not an independent intervening act,” as the LAT summarized her argument.

“[Voll] likens the incident to an unsecured piece of lumber falling off the back of a vehicle.”

Also in the news: Can insurers set rates on Chinese EVs without risk data?

LAT Vice-Chair Trina Morissette didn’t agree.

For one thing, Morissette didn’t find the dog attack happened out of the ordinary use or operation of an automobile — for example, the transportation of pets.

“Although dogs leaping out of a vehicle’s open window is not unheard of, I do not find it to be a normal incident of the risk created by the use or operation of the automobile as described in [previous caselaw].” Morissette wrote in her decision, released Feb. 5. “Furthermore, in my view, a dog leaping out of an open window and attacking an individual is an even less normal expected incident or risk of ‘storing’ or transporting a family pet.”

Moreover, the injuries were not directly caused by the ordinary use of the van, Morissette ruled.

CAIB New Edition 1.0 – a New Standard for Broker Education Image

Insights Paid Content

CAIB New Edition 1.0 – a New Standard for Broker Education

Preparing brokers to navigate an increasingly complex insurance landscape.

By 

Sponsor Image

“I find that [Voll] has failed to establish that the use or operation of the vehicle was the direct cause of her injuries,” Morissette wrote. “Rather, I find that the injuries, which resulted in her impairments, were caused by an intervening act, namely, the dog attack.”

Finally, the tribunal ruled Voll had first notified the insurer of her intent to file a claim when she first submitted her OCF-1 application form on Dec. 5, 2024 — seven months after the incident.

Voll said she delayed her claim because she didn’t know her various legal options for making a claim. Also, she said, she wanted time for her injuries to get better before making the claim.

The tribunal did not find these were reasonable explanations for not submitting the claim within the mandatory seven-day deadline.

David Gambrill

David has twice served as Canadian Underwriter’s senior editor, both from 2005 to 2012, and again from 2017 to the present.