What is the standard of care of an insurance broker?

The summary trial judge was bound to accept, as she did, the uncontradicted evidence before her of the standard of care to be expected on an insurance broker. In areas where the courts lack expertise with respect to a particular field of endeavour, it is necessary to rely on expert evidence of standard practice of those in that field of endeavour in order to determine whether the requisite duty of care has been met. In ter Neuzen v. Korn, 1995 CanLII 72 (SCC), [1995] 3 S.C.R. 674 at para. 39 Sopinka J. referred with approval to the following statement by Professor Fleming in The Law of Torts (7th ed. 1987) at p. 109: Conformity with general practice, on the other hand, usually dispels a charge of negligence. It tends to show what others in the same “business” considered sufficient, that the defendant could not have learnt how to avoid the accident by the example of others, that most probably no other practical precautions could have been taken, and that the impact of an adverse judgment (especially in cases involving industry or a profession) will be industry-wide and thus assume the function of a “test case”. Finally, it underlines the need for caution against passing too cavalierly upon the conduct and decision of experts.