Courts are too soft on insurer bad faith, according to Shane Katz, a senior lawyer at Singer Kwinter. Canada’s property and casualty insurers posted a combined $7.88 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2025 alone, which Katz believes is why the courts have got punitive damages wrong.
Katz thinks that the courts have failed to grasp the fact that these companies make billions in profit, and that slapping a $100,000 punitive award on them is essentially just a licensing fee to continue doing business this way.
Singer Kwinter has built its reputation for taking on insurers in the early 2000s, when founding partner Alf Kwinter secured a string of significant punitive damages verdicts. In 2003, a jury awarded punitive damages of $350,000 in Plester v. Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Co. after a five-week trial.
The Court of Appeal upheld the award, and later that year, a St. Catharines jury awarded a combined $2.5 million in punitive damages to Frank Mazza and his tenant after their insurer denied a similar fire loss claim. They remain the only law firm in Canada to have obtained a punitive damages award against an insurer on four separate occasions.
Katz’s current frustration centers on a threshold that hasn’t moved much since Kwinter’s streak. Whiten v. Pilot Insurance Co., where the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a $1-million punitive damages award against an insurer for bad faith handling of a homeowner’s fire claim, remains one of the only awards of its size in Ontario in over two decades.
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The firm will pursue punitive damages awards where the facts support it, but most bad faith claims never make it to a courtroom because the vast majority settle. Strong evidence of potential bad faith can push an insurer to pay a higher percentage of a claim to avoid trial, Katz says. He notes that insurers will almost never explicitly agree to pay punitive damages as part of that settlement, no matter how strong the case looks.
Those that do reach trial have to contend with the standard set by the Supreme Court of Canada in Whiten. The conduct must depart markedly from ordinary standards of decency, described as malicious, oppressive, or high-handed.
Katz looks at whether the conduct was planned and deliberate, whether there was pressure to settle, and how long the behaviour went on for. Even though most don’t get to trial, Katz sees evidence of bad faith in a lot of these cases, which makes him think insurance companies aren’t very concerned about punitive damages.
Katz finds the lack of significant awards in Ontario concerning.
He points to Ontario’s no-fault auto insurance system as a clear example of how the system is stacked against claimants, with accident benefits disputes going to the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT), which generally doesn’t award costs against either side unless a party’s conduct was frivolous, vexatious, unreasonable, or in bad faith.
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That means an insurer can deny a benefit, force a claimant through a hearing, and lose, with no financial consequence beyond paying the benefit it already owed.
Creating certain cost consequences to level the playing field is one possible solution. Katz doesn’t think this would open the doors for plaintiffs to bring unmeritorious claims, but rather make the system more fair, as seen in cases where courts have ruled on bad faith.
Singer Kwinter’s niche of property loss claims means its day-to-day work centers on large commercial and residential losses where an insurer has refused to pay. The firm fights for its clients by gathering documentation showing the insurance companies where they were wrong.
Katz urges judges and the courts, when faced with these cases, to strongly consider giving awards that will properly deter insurance companies from bad faith conduct.
