Ontario’s top court says insurance policy covers an outdoor worker bitten by mosquito with West Nile virus

Ontario’s Court of Appeal has deemed the 2002 biting of an outdoor worker by a West Nile Virus-carrying mosquito an “accident,” awarding the worker Cdn$130,000 of coverage under his insurance policy.

Ryszard Kolbuc was working as a plasterer when the virus-carrying mosquito bit him, rendering him a paraplegic.

At the time of the accident, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Karen Weiler wrote in her endorsement, while mosquito bites were common to a person in Kolbuc’s occupation, there had been no reported cases of the West Nile Virus in Ontario.

“It was an unforeseen, unexpected event that was caused by an external source – a mosquito – and falls within the ordinary definition of an accident,” Justice Weiler wrote.

“The cause of the illness was an accidental event.”

ACE Insurance Company of North America argued that an oudoor worker getting bitten by a mosquito (and any subsequent illness) was not an “accident” and hence excluded from policy coverage. But Weiler noted that although an outdoor worker getting bitten by a mosquito was not itself an “accident,” the transmission of West Nile was unforeseen at the time, making the disease an “accident” under the policy terms.