TORONTO - A man who was left paralyzed by West Nile virus is entitled to receive an insurance payout, Ontario's highest court ruled Monday.
The decision means Ryszard Kolbuc can receive the $130,000 insurance payout he was denied years ago, said Chris Paliere, one of Kolbuc's appeal lawyers. "He's ecstatic," Paliere said of his client.
Kolbuc, a plasterer, was bitten in 2002 by a mosquito carrying the virus while working in downtown Toronto. Three weeks later, the then-52-year-old was a paraplegic - becoming one of the first identified West Nile victims in Canada, Paliere said.
Kolbuc applied for $130,000 in accident coverage under his insurance plan, but the company refused to pay, saying the illness was due to natural causes, said Paliere.
Kolbuc took his insurer, Ace Ina Insurance, to court, but a trial judge ruled in January 2006 that a mosquito bite is not an accident that merited an insurance payout.
However, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Monday that the cause of Kolbuc's illness was an accidental event, and that he could not have reasonably foreseen or expected to contract the virus from the type of work he was doing.
"At that time, while mosquito bites were common to a person in this occupation, there had been no reported cases of the West Nile virus in Ontario," the Appeal Court stated in its decision released Monday.
"It was an unforeseen, unexpected event that was caused by an external source - a mosquito - and falls within the ordinary definition of an accident. The cause of the illness was an accidental event."
The insurance company has also been ordered to pay more than $42,000 in court costs.
During the appeal, the insurer had argued that a disease is not an accident. However, the Appeal Court ruled that an accident can still cause a disease.
