In the 2018 decisions of Cadieux v. Clouthier and Carroll v. McEwen, the Ontario Court of
Appeal clarified the manner in which accident benefits are to be
deducted from awards of tort damages.
In the past, there were two approaches. The 2015 case of Gilbert v. South was an example of the
strict matching or apples-to-apples approach. In contrast, the 2016
case of Bassandra v. Sforza is an example of the
silo approach, which requires the tort award only to match
generally with the broad corresponding Statutory Accident Benefits
Schedule ("SABS") categories.
As a result of the competing decisions, the Court convened a
five-judge panel in order to affirm the silo approach to the
deduction of SABS.