Our lawyers know Quebec insurance law inside out.
If your situation involves insurance law, our lawyers in Québec City and Lévis can help you.
The expertise of Verreau Dufresne in this area allows us to provide legal opinions, advise you and represent you before the various tribunals, doing everything possible to resolve your dispute quickly and efficiently, before a hearing is held. Feel free to contact us for more information.
We step in to resolve your dispute:
- Property insurance
- Damage insurance
- Liability insurance
- Home insurance
- Refusal to indemnify
- Refusal to defend
- Exclusions in the insurance contract
- Aggravation of risk
- Declaration of risk
- Errors and omissions
- Misrepresentations
- Reinsurance
- Interpretation of policies
- Disability insurance
The insurance sector has grown significantly in Quebec over the past decades. Insurers are increasingly inventive in creating new insurance products and new methods of classifying or segmenting risks, constantly seeking to increase their profitability while protecting the pool of insureds.
However, these objectives can sometimes lead to disputes with insureds, particularly when an insurer refuses to pay out after a loss.
Many situations can lead insurers to refuse to compensate the victim of a loss. This can happen when the insurer claims that the risk is excluded under the insurance contract or when the insurer fears that the insured did not disclose certain material information when the risk was initially declared.
In Quebec, several statutory provisions govern and limit the scope of exceptions to insurance coverage. For example, an insurer cannot include in its policy a general clause providing that it will be released from its obligations in the event of a breach of the law, unless it limits the breaches concerned to criminal acts. Similarly, in life insurance, an exclusion clause providing that the insurer will not have to pay benefits in the event of suicide is valid only for the first two years of coverage under an insurance policy.
The insurance contract is also unusual in that it requires a higher level of transparency and good faith than is normally required for contracts. When the risk is initially assessed, the policyholder must not only answer the insurer’s questions honestly, but also disclose any relevant information that may influence their insurability, the risk or the amount of the premium. Failure to meet this obligation could result in the insurance contract being declared null and release the insurer from its obligation to pay out in the event of a loss.
This duty to inform the insurer also continues throughout the coverage. The insured must promptly notify the insurer of any aggravation of the risk that could significantly affect the premiums, the risk or insurability.
The particularities of insurance law are sometimes complex, and various disputes can arise between an insurer and its insured.
Lawyers in Québec City and Lévis
A competent lawyer in insurance law has excellent litigation and negotiation skills. They must not only have an analytical mind to identify all the strengths and weaknesses of their file, but also be creative in proposing innovative solutions and achieving a quick settlement of the dispute.
