Patrick Brown Takes Down Insurance Company

An issue that sometimes arises in defamation actions is whether the costs of a prosecution or a defence is covered by an insurance policy. This issue arises particularly when a politician is either a plaintiff or a defendant and the impugned defamatory words are published in the course of the politician's duties.

But as seen in Brown v. Soveriegn General Insurance Co., 2021 ONSC 511, the issue of insurance defence coverage also applies in the area of entertainment law and book publishing.

In this case, Patrick Brown, the former leader of the Ontario PC Party and now Mayor of Brampton, entered into an agreement to publish a non-fiction book with Optimum Publishing International ("OPI"). OPI was a division of J.F. Moore Lithographers Incorporated ("J.F.Moore").