What is the test for determining the meaning of an insurance contract?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Riordan v. Lombard Ins. Co., 2001 BCSC 1627 (CanLII):
In the same vein, in Higgins, Robbins, J.A. cited with approval the following passage from Hoyt v. New Hampshire Ins. Co. (1942), 29 A. 2d 121 (N.H.): . . . in construing an insurance contract the test is not what the insurance company intended the words of the policy to mean but what a reasonable person in the position of the insured would have understood them to mean.
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