{"id":13631,"date":"2024-06-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/?post_type=team&#038;p=13631"},"modified":"2026-06-29T15:54:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T15:54:32","slug":"he-has-written-frequently-on-insurance-issues-and-has-contributed-to-various-continuing-legal-education-and-insurance-industry-publications","status":"publish","type":"team","link":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/jonathan-hodes\/","title":{"rendered":"JONATHAN HODES"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Hodes is an insurance coverage and defence lawyer, accredited mediator, and trusted advisor to insurers, brokers, and risk professionals. With nearly 30 years of experience, he advises clients across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Bermuda on complex insurance, liability, and dispute resolution matters.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan&#8217;s practice focuses on insurance coverage, defence litigation, strategic claims management, and dispute resolution across a broad range of risks, including Property, Casualty, Directors&#8217; &amp; Officers&#8217; (D&amp;O), Professional Indemnity\/Errors &amp; Omissions (E&amp;O), Disability, Manufacturers&#8217; Liability, Wrap-Up Liability, and specialty insurance lines.<\/p>\n<h3>Insurance Coverage<\/h3>\n<p>As coverage counsel, Jonathan provides strategic coverage advice and represents insurers in complex litigation, arbitration, and dispute resolution proceedings. He regularly advises on high-value and multi-jurisdictional claims, including matters involving excess and layered programmes, contribution and allocation disputes, fraud, and coverage under all types of policies. He has appeared before the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada in leading insurance coverage cases and is frequently retained in matters involving cross-border issues and competing jurisdictional considerations.<\/p>\n<h3>Defence<\/h3>\n<p>As defence counsel, Jonathan has extensive experience defending insureds in complex liability claims involving personal injury, property damage, construction defect, product liability, professional negligence, and employment practices disputes. He has appeared before courts and tribunals throughout Canada and has been retained as an expert witness on Canadian law in foreign proceedings before the Superior Court of Washington State.<\/p>\n<h3>Mediation<\/h3>\n<p>Jonathan is also an experienced mediator who assists parties in resolving complex commercial, insurance, and liability disputes efficiently and pragmatically. His mediation practice includes injury and disability claims, property losses, construction disputes, professional liability matters, product liability claims, employment-related claims and coverage disputes under both first- and third-party policies. Clients value his practical approach, commercial perspective, and ability to understand the interests of all stakeholders while working toward timely and cost-effective and durable resolutions.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Professional Affiliation<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Jonathan is a Past President of Canadian Defence Lawyers and a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) and the Association of Defense Trial Attorneys (ADTA), both invitation-only international organizations comprised of leading defence and insurance practitioners. He is also an active member of DRI and maintains strong professional relationships throughout the North American and international insurance markets.\u00a0 He regularly speaks on insurance related issues to underwriters, claims teams, brokers and lawyers in Canada, the US and the UK.<\/p>\n<h3>Notable Mandates<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Coverage<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Excess D&amp;O Coverage: Acting for excess D&amp;O insurer in LCIA arbitration involving multiple underlying claims and complex coverage issues arising under a layered international insurance programme.<\/li>\n<li>Excess E&amp;O Coverage: Coverage and monitoring counsel for excess E&amp;O insurer in claim against law firm for negligent advice in relation high profile infrastructure project<\/li>\n<li>CGL Coverage: Defending CGL insurer in action on policy arising out of denial of claim for breach of warranty conditions where insured&#8217;s conduct had allegedly resulted in fire causing $65 Million in damages<\/li>\n<li>Layered Coverage\/Allocation: Defending CGL insurer under prior knowledge provisions in equitable contribution proceedings brought by settling insurers in long tail construction defect claim<\/li>\n<li>Overlapping Coverage and Equitable Contribution: Appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada for the successful appellant in Canada&#8217;s leading case on equitable contribution in overlapping coverage scenarios (Family Insurance Corp. v. Lombard Canada Ltd., 2002 SCC 48)<\/li>\n<li>Property Coverage: Successfully defended insurer&#8217;s denial of coverage arising from a major building damage loss before the British Columbia Court of Appeal (Tremblett v. TD Insurance Direct Agency Ltd., 2024 BCCA 358)<\/li>\n<li>Coverage and monitoring counsel: Advising on D&amp;O and products liability issues in connection with a high-profile product liability claim with alleged exposure exceeding CAD $100 million<\/li>\n<li>Disability: Defending disability insurers in claims for denial of benefits and bad faith<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Defence<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Product Liability: Defending oil supplier in 8 figure product liability claim in relation to supply of gasoline to territorial government<\/li>\n<li>Defending battery manufacturer in numerous cases arising out of lithium battery explosions resulting in catastrophic injury and property losses<\/li>\n<li>Defending private label importer in catastrophic injury claim arising out of alleged torch lighter explosion<\/li>\n<li>Defending concrete pumping equipment manufacturer in fatal accident claim involving a truck boom collapse<\/li>\n<li>Defending manufacturer of storage units in claim involving allegations of negligent manufacture leading to damage to stored property<\/li>\n<li>Construction Defect: Defending Supplier of equipment in 8 figure claim arising out of construction of ship loading terminal<\/li>\n<li>Defending claim involving failure of structural materials incorporated into highway overpass<\/li>\n<li>Misrepresentation: Defending educational institution in multi -million-dollar VanIAC arbitration involving misrepresentation and breach of contract claim<\/li>\n<li>Professional Liability: Defending law firm in claim arising from alleged negligent advice in relation to cross-border insurance coverage<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13332,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"categories":[184],"tags":[73,74,212,231,224,75,213,72,218],"class_list":["post-13631","team","type-team","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professionals","tag-appeal-and-judicial-review","tag-arbitration-and-mediation","tag-avocat-en","tag-civil-liability","tag-collection","tag-insurance","tag-lawyer-en","tag-recovery-actions","tag-vancouver-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/team\/13631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/team"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/team"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/team\/13631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18132,"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/team\/13631\/revisions\/18132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gascon.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}