Likely. There are no dirt bike cases, but there are conflicting cases on motor cycles.

In Thomeus v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co., 1978 CarswellAlta 12 the Alberta Court of Appeal said that an automobile does not include a motor cycle. The Trial Judge assimilated the definition of "motor vehicle" from the Highway Traffic Act into the definition of "automobile" under the Insurance Act. The Alberta Court of Appeal disagreed and concluded that the Insurance Act was not in pari material with the Highway Traffic Act, and that definitions contained in the Highway Traffic Act were not incorporated into the Insurance Act or the policy. The Court concluded that "in common understanding a motor cycle is not equated with an automobile".

The problem was that the Alberta Court of Appeal in Thomeus distinguished a Supreme Court of Canada decision in Tawa v. Co-op. Fire & Casualty Co that came to the opposite conclusion.

Tawa was an Alberta Court of Appeal decision that was affirmed by the SCC. The Supreme Court accepted that a motor cycle was an automobile:

11 The initial contention of counsel for the appellant was that the trial Judge and the Appellate Division had erred in interpreting the word "automobile" as used in the endorsement as including a "motor cycle". This contention must be considered in light of the meaning attached to the word "automobile" by s. 278(a) of the 1955 Act which was in force at the time when the policy was issued and which applied to all automobile insurance contracts made in the Province of Alberta. The said section read as follows

(a) 'Automobile' includes all self-propelled vehicles, their trailers, accessories and equipment, but not railway rolling stock, watercraft or aircraft of any kind.

12 In my opinion there can be no doubt that a motor cycle is a "self-propelled vehicle" within the meaning of this subsection.

In this case the motor cycle was insured under the policy. The SCC went further and concluded that since the application for insurance was for the motor bike, references in the Policy to "the automobile" meant the motor bike.

There was a dissent in this decision that agreed that a motor cycle was an automobile, but disagreed on whether a policy exclusion applied.

For more information, contact:

Amanda Kostek
CBM Lawyers
Edmonton