Sask. Supreme Court upholds decision not to pay insurance to estate of man who died of drug overdose

Val Jantzen is angry that two insurance companies continued to collect premiums from her son knowing he was addicted to cocaine, then denied coverage after he died of a cocaine overdose in 2018.

“They were well aware of his lifestyle, his addiction,” she said in an interview.

“They didn’t do anything about it. They just continued to collect his premiums. They never addressed it. They didn’t put an addendum to his insurance policy.”

Val’s son Josh Jantzen had two policies, one for mortgage insurance and one for a line of credit, to ensure that those debts would be paid in the event of his death.

Val is also disappointed that the judges of the Court of King’s Bench and the Saskatchewan’s Court of Appeal both sided with the insurers when she went to court to try to force the companies to pay.

The decision of the Court of Appeals was written by Judge Robert Leurer and published earlier this month.

Val isn’t the only one disappointed.

“I think this is just another example of how we continue to criminalize substance use disorders in our country and around the world,” said Kayla DeMong, executive director of Prairie Harm Reduction.

“We recognize the underlying issues that often drive someone into a substance use disorder, but when it comes down to it, we make moralistic judgments about a person and criminalize what should be treated as a health problem.”

Josh, 37, was found dead on February 1, 2018, at his home in Saskatoon. The autopsy concluded that he had a lethal amount of alcohol and cocaine in his system.

According to his mother, Josh had been struggling with addictions for at least a decade. He worked in a potash mine and had gone through rehab three times, but kept relapsing.

Val was quick to point out that her son wasn’t completely defined by his addictions. He grew up in a middle-class Saskatoon home with three brothers. He played sports, rode motorcycles, and went hunting and fishing. Josh worked hard, paid his bills and was in a serious relationship.

According to Val, Josh was self-aware enough to seek help on his own and conscientious enough not to lie about his struggles when he got insurance.

The Court of Appeal ruled that “the insurers rightly withheld coverage because Mr. Jantzen died as a result of committing the crime of possession of the cocaine he used.”

TD Life Insurance Company and Canada Life Assurance Company both declined interview requests.

Kevin Dorse, of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc., said he was unable to comment on the details of this case.

“What we can say is that it is very common for life insurance policies sold in all parts of Canada to contain provisions that exclude or limit the payment of a claim upon death in specific circumstances,” he said in an email.

Lori Sandstrom, an insurance law professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said insurance companies across the country will be well aware of this decision.

“I think this decision is important because it interprets an exclusion clause in a policy, and insurers are always looking at how the court is going to interpret an exclusion clause,” Sandstrom said.

“They’re looking at a sequence of events, so you can see from both decisions that the court was looking for similar exclusion clauses and different policies in different factual situations and applying it here…so you could see that interpretations, if they’re persuasive, are relied upon throughout Canada.”

Sandstrom is also disappointed with the way addictions are being criminalized – and with the wider implications of the Court of Appeal ruling.

“Because as a society we have chosen not to decriminalize possession for personal use, despite it being an addiction, I think this interpretation could have quite broad implications,” she said.

“We have a lot of people, I think, who are struggling with addictions, and now because of the interpretation that courts have given, exclusion clauses like this, they can lose their insurance because of an addiction.”

DeMong said Josh and his family are being punished for something that doesn’t warrant punishment.

“They are happy to take his money. They are happy to take his premiums. They are happy to work with him as long as they benefit financially from this situation,” she said.

“And the moment they have to pay that and fulfill their end of the deal, it becomes this bad versus good situation again, and they’ve viewed it as bad.”