 The leading case in Canada on period of damages is the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Witten and Pilot Insurance. Let's have a look at that case by looking at actual excerpts from that case. The first couple of excerpts set up the facts which are summarized in something called a head note. A head note is a summary of the case that is found at the beginning. So in these facts we have Mrs. Witten and her husband discovered a fire in their house late at night. So they and their daughter ran from the house wearing only their night clothes. It was in the middle of winter it was minus 18 degrees Celsius. Mr. Witten, the husband, gave his slippers to his daughter to go for help and in the process he suffered serious frostbite to his feet. The fire totally destroyed everything their home and everything they owned in there including including their their three cats. They had to move into into a cottage that they that they rented for $650 a month. The insurance company, the company that provided the house insurance which was pilot insurance, made a single payment of $5,000 for their living expenses and covered the rent for a couple of months and then they then they all of a sudden stopped paying that rent without even telling the family and then they they pursued what was described as a confrontational policy in with respect to this insurance claim. You know they knew that the that the family here was in very poor financial shape. So they decided to take advantage of the poor financial situation of of of this family. They they essentially asserted that this family had committed arson and started had started this fire. So they made this assertion even though there was absolutely absolutely no proof that that that the fire was had been started by by arson. So the local fire chief had said that it wasn't it wasn't arson. The insurance company's own expert said there was no no evidence of of arson and and the case says that the the insurance company's position of arson was wholly discredited at trial and its own lawyer conceded that there was no error of reality to the allegation of of arson. So at at the trial of this case the the jury awarded compensatory damages which would have been covered the the cost or the value of the house and they also awarded one million dollars of punitive damages and that decision at trial was was appealed to the next next level of court above it which would have been the Ontario Court of Appeal. There the the court allowed the punitive damages but reduced them all the way down to a hundred thousand dollars. So then then the case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. So the the legal issue that the Supreme Court of Canada dealt with was whether the jury's award of the one million dollars in punitive damages should be should be restored. The legal principles that come out of this case that are applied in this case are that punitive damages are awarded against the defendant in exceptional cases for malicious oppressive and high-handed misconduct that offends the court's sense of decency. Now let's look at how the court the Supreme Court of Canada applied the law to to the facts. So they said that you know the more reprehensible conduct the higher the rational limit for the potential award of of punitive damages and they they noted that the need for denunciation is aggravated in this case where the conduct persisted over a lengthy period of time in this case it was two years up to the date of the trial and they also said that despite the defendant's awareness despite the pilot insurance's awareness of the hardship it knew it was inflicting indeed the insurance company anticipated that the greater the hardship you know to the to the to the family here the appellant the lower the settlement she would be she would ultimately be forced to accept so the court was saying that pilot insurance as a matter of conscious strategy was was taking advantage of the financial hardship of this family to force them to to settle for a lower amount than than what the insurance company was legally obligated to pay under the insurance policy. The the court here also noted that insurance contracts such as the one involved here are purchased by the public to get peace of mind and it said that the more devastating the loss the more the insured may be at the financial mercy of the insurer and the more difficult it may be to challenge a wrongful refusal to pay the claim deterrence is required in this case the court says and the court also talks about talks about good faith so good faith in in terms of insurance contract is an obligation of insurance company to to to honestly abide by the terms of insurance policy in determining whether or not to pay out on a claim on that insurance policy so if it if it's required under the terms of the contract under under the duty of good faith they should pay what they're what they're obligated to pay under under the contract the the court here noted that this relationship of reliance and vulnerability that was outrageously exported by was outrageously exported by pilot in this case and they said that the jury in this case appeared to decide a powerful message of retribution deterrence and denunciation had to be sent to the insurance company