Halifax Regional Municipality v. Zurich Insurance Company Ltd., 2015 NSSC 373 (CanLII)

This case was heard in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.

The Halifax Regional Municipality ("HRM") applied for a Court declaration that Zurich Insurance Company Ltd., Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Company of Canada, and Arch Insurance Canada Ltd. should compensate the Municipality for the loss it suffered as a result of roughly 200,000 litres of diesel fuel being released into the environment at the Metro Transit bus depot in the Burnside Industrial Park. The insurance companies claimed that they were not liable under the terms of the Municipality’s insurance policy, and they brought a motion requesting that the Court convert the HRM’s application to an action (that is, that the Court convert the relatively simple legal proceeding into a more complex one resembling a trial). After considering the law and legal principles surrounding the conversion of applications into actions, the Court held that it was not necessary to make the conversion in this case, as the legal issue at stake was relatively straightforward.

View the Decision on CanLII: https://www.canlii.org/en/ns/nssc/doc/2015/2015nssc373/2015nssc373.html

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