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Torts - Incremental Development
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. Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia
In Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia (SCC, 2026) the Supreme Court of Canada establishes of a new tort of 'Intimate Partner Violence'.
Here the court summarizes their ruling on this leading case:I. Overview
[1] In divorce proceedings initiated by Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia proved that she had been the victim of abuse at the hands of her husband over the entire life of their marriage. The trial judge described the abuse as a “16-year pattern of coercion and control” (2022 ONSC 1303, 161 O.R. (3d) 360, at para. 5). She found that this was not just an unhappy or dysfunctional relationship, but a “violent” one (ibid.). The abusive conduct was sustained and varied in character. It included the husband’s physical assaults, humiliation, intimidation, and conduct intending to inflict emotional distress; it extended to isolation of Ms. Ahluwalia from family members, mistreatment as a means of pressure for sex, and financial control. The trial judge found that Mr. Ahluwalia’s conduct had coerced and controlled his wife in order to break her will and condition her to obey him from the beginning of their marriage. Behind the shield of intimacy, he imposed a conception of marriage on Ms. Ahluwalia where the husband and wife were one, and that one was Mr. Ahluwalia.
[2] In addition to remedies ordered under the applicable statutes governing marriage breakdown, including child support, spousal support and equalization of family property, Ms. Ahluwalia — who was self-represented at trial — was awarded $150,000 in damages for what the trial judge characterized as the novel tort of family violence. The trial judge would have awarded, in the alternative, the same amount to Ms. Ahluwalia for the “included” torts of assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress (“IIED”) (paras. 103 and 111). Before the Court of Appeal, Mr. Ahluwalia conceded that his abusive conduct gave rise to liability under existing torts. He nevertheless successfully obtained a reduction of the damages awarded at trial and a declaration that no new tort of domestic violence or coercive control should be recognized.
[3] Mr. Ahluwalia’s abuse, amounting to coercive and controlling conduct, rests on the trial judge’s findings of fact which are no longer in dispute. There is no disagreement between the parties that intimate partner violence is a pernicious social ill deserving of the full attention of the law. The Court of Appeal was no doubt right to say that intimate partner violence represents the “cancer of domestic relationships” (2023 ONCA 476, 167 O.R. (3d) 561, at para. 43). Further, the parties both recognize that private law, specifically the common law of torts, can be invoked in family law proceedings to obtain financial redress for this kind of violence. The parties have agreed not to contest the quantum of damages fixed by the Court of Appeal.
[4] What is in issue is the basis for liability in tort. Ms. Ahluwalia says the trial judge was right to award damages based on a novel intentional tort of family violence. Mr. Ahluwalia answers that the existing torts of battery, assault, and IIED provide an adequate basis for the damage award, and that the common law should not be extended to recognize a new tort as the basis for liability.
[5] On the strength of the facts and Ms. Ahluwalia’s pleadings, I would recognize a tort of “intimate partner violence”. In order to establish liability under this new tort, a plaintiff must prove three elements: first, that the abusive conduct arose in an intimate partnership or its aftermath; second, that the defendant intentionally engaged in that conduct; and third, that the conduct, on an objective measure, constitutes coercive control. Proof of these three elements suffices to establish that the plaintiff has suffered a dignitary harm (see generally Insurance Corporation of British Columbia v. Ari, 2025 BCCA 131, 46 C.C.L.I. (6th) 173, at para. 32). Harm flows from proof of the intentional wrong because coercive control directly interferes with the plaintiff’s legal interests in dignity, autonomy, and equality within an intimate partnership. The extent of that harm may warrant a greater or lesser quantum of damages, depending on the circumstances.
[6] Ms. Ahluwalia has made out all three elements of the new tort. She was the victim of a protracted pattern of abusive behaviour that served not just to hurt her psychologically or physically, but to bring her to heel. Mr. Ahluwalia’s coercive conduct included three apparently discrete acts of extreme physical violence. But it also encompassed, as part of the same tort of intimate partner violence, a wide array of more subtle forms of manipulation, not all of which are addressed by existing torts. Taken cumulatively, the whole of this misconduct justifies the principal award of damages under the new tort. Separate claims under existing torts were therefore not necessary because all of Mr. Ahluwalia’s harmful conduct was undertaken to the same coercive effect, to deprive Ms. Ahluwalia of an autonomous and equal voice in decision making in the marriage. Furthermore, he wrongly limited her freedom to live her own life within the intimate partnership — to make choices in relation to her career, her relationship with her family and friends, and the pursuit of her own happiness. Cumulatively, Mr. Ahluwalia’s conduct subordinated Ms. Ahluwalia to his will in a manner that undermined her rights to dignity and autonomy as a person and to equality in the relationship. On the basis of the trial judge’s findings of fact, the entire sum of $100,000 in general and compensatory damages must therefore be awarded for the tort of intimate partner violence, which includes but is not limited to those physical acts of violence and psychological abuse.
[7] The term violence often focuses the legal mind on threats to bodily and psychological integrity, but intimate partner violence is best understood as coercive and controlling conduct that undermines autonomy in other insidious ways, not just egregious acts of physical violence, but tactics of isolation, manipulation, humiliation, surveillance, economic abuse, sexual coercion, and intimidation that can control and entrap intimate partners (see J. Mosher et al., “Submission to Justice Canada on the Criminalization of Coercive Control”, in Osgoode Hall Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 4619067 (October 30, 2023), at p. 5, cited with approval in Dunmore v. Mehralian, 2025 SCC 20, at para. 57, per Martin J.). In this case, the trial judge accepted that Mr. Ahluwalia’s abusive conduct served to control Ms. Ahluwalia and that coercive conduct did not just cause physical and emotional harm.
[8] Corrective justice, which seeks to restore parties to the position they would have been in had the wrong not occurred, calls for the recognition of this new tort as a properly incremental response by the common law to this coercive form of intimate partner violence. Liability under this novel tort of intimate partner violence is based on intentionally abusive conduct undertaken by one intimate partner that coerces or controls the other in a manner that is inherently incompatible with their relationship. The new tort is tied to the intimate partnership and is distinct from existing torts in that it seeks to compensate a qualitatively different wrong of coercive control, and a qualitatively different harm of the loss of autonomy. It is not simply an aggregate, under a broad umbrella, of wrongful conduct already remedied by various existing torts. While some of the conduct captured by the new tort may overlap with existing torts, coercive intimate partner violence generally includes and extends beyond discrete acts of physical and psychological abuse. None of the existing torts consider whether the alleged wrongful conduct coerces or controls the victim, nor are they designed to compensate the victim for the distinct injury to their intangible interests in dignity, autonomy, and equality within an intimate relationship. These are the distinctive features that constitute the hallmark of the new tort, distinguishing it from misconduct between strangers. It is these features — not captured by existing torts — that must not go without a remedy and that justify, in keeping with the proper incremental development of the common law, the creation of a new basis for liability applicable to intimate partners. This coercive and controlling conduct is a violation of the trust and equality inherent in intimate partnerships in Canadian law.
[9] Aggravated damages awarded under existing torts simply because the harm occurs in an intimate partnership are an insufficient remedy. The victim of the tort of intimate partner violence has not just suffered a notionally more severe harm associated with misconduct under an existing tort; the victim of the tort of intimate partner violence has suffered a distinct harm to their interests in dignity, autonomy, and equality within the relationship for which they have a right to full compensation which cannot be addressed through aggravated damages under existing torts. The quantum of damages must properly reflect the breadth and depth of the harms caused by intimate partner violence on all aspects of the victim’s life. The intimate partner context does not merely constitute an aggravating factor — it is an element of the tortious conduct itself.
[10] The dispute between Ms. Ahluwalia and her violent ex‑husband is emblematic of the inadequacy of private law in its present guise to account for how vulnerable persons in intimate partnerships experience harm at the hands of the very individuals in whom they have placed their trust. Part of this inadequacy reflects the law’s entrenched and outmoded tendency to avoid entering the realm of intimate family relations, even when there are signs that things have gone very wrong. I commend the trial judge and the Court of Appeal for not falling into that trap. But in my view, part of this inadequacy also stems from private law’s persistent failure to respond adequately to the plight of victims of intimate partner violence. The existing law of torts, developed outside of the intimate partner context, can be a barrier where the character of the tortious conduct is misunderstood. When conduct is particularly egregious — plain incidents of battery or of flagrant or outrageous conduct giving rise to proven psychological harm — damage awards are often low and could be corrected by increased damage awards for existing torts committed in the intimate partner setting. But when coercive and controlling conduct incompatible with the intimate partnership falls short of the requirements associated with existing torts, the abuse goes uncompensated because the wrong and its resulting harm to the victim’s dignity, autonomy, and equality inherent in intimate partnerships are not properly understood by the current law.
[11] Parliament has seized upon the reality that intimate partner violence can be criminal — an offence against the public good. Intimate partner violence is indeed a reality to which criminal law is increasingly attuned and responsive (see, e.g., House of Commons, Standing Committee on the Status of Women, Coercive Control in Canada: Report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, 1st Sess., 45th Parl., November 2025, at pp. 31-40; ss. 718.2(a)(ii), 718.201 and 718.3(8) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46). Yet the very people who feel the hard edge of this abuse and who seek monetary compensation for the loss associated with intimate partner violence often find themselves left behind by private law (F. Kelly, “Private Law Responses to Domestic Violence: The Intersection of Family Law and Tort” (2009), 44 S.C.L.R. (2d) 321, at pp. 324-25).
[12] An articulate body of scholarship has denounced the inability of tort law as it currently stands to see intimate partner violence as a distinct civil wrong, causing distinct harm, by reason of the nature of the relationship in which intimate partner violence occurs. The shortcomings of the law require more than just a change in perspective when determining damages once liability has been found. It calls for a recognition that the civil wrong associated with coercive control and the harm resulting from intimate partner violence are different from those associated with other torts. The tortfeasor in intimate partner violence does not simply hurt or threaten their partner. The abuse can pervade the relationship and controls the life of the victim such that the intimate partnership becomes a dangerous place where the abuser decides and the victim obeys or risks facing renewed abuse. Intimate partner violence is not fully captured by assault, battery, IIED, or other existing torts because they fail to account for the intimate partner context and the distinct effect of the abuse visited upon the intimate partner: to dominate the relationship by coercing and controlling the victim, in various and sometimes subtle ways, often over a long period of time, so the relationship itself becomes one of subordination, inequality, and indignity.
[13] The new tort of intimate partner violence recognized here will often involve, as in the case of the Ahluwalias, a pattern of coercive wrongdoing of various kinds over a period of time. But I hasten to say that a single wrongful act, committed by one intimate partner on the other, is not excluded as part of this new tort of intimate partner violence, nor are discrete acts of abuse that appear disconnected over time. A single act of physical violence inflicted by one intimate partner upon the other may be sufficient for the aggressor to lay down the law for the relationship in a manner that serves to control, isolate, or entrap the victim (see L. C. Neilson, Enhancing Safety: When Domestic Violence Cases are in Multiple Legal Systems (Criminal, family, child protection) A Family Law, Domestic Violence Perspective (2nd ed. 2013), at p. 32). Sometimes, as in this case, discrete acts of physical, psychological, or sexual violence are best understood, when measured in the context of the relationship considered as a whole, as part of a pattern of coercive and controlling conduct, all of which deprive the victim of their dignity, autonomy, and equality within the relationship. An act of violent misconduct may, on its own, constitute coercive control; it may also form part of a wider pattern that includes what is sometimes seen as lesser forms of violent coercion — for example, harassment, stalking, isolation of a partner from others, financial control, or pressure for unwanted sex.
[14] Whether it manifests itself as a single act or as a pattern of misconduct in an intimate partnership, the controlling effect of this brand of intimate partner violence means that the aggressor has acted in a manner incompatible with the intimate partnership. The threshold for determining whether the alleged conduct objectively constitutes coercive control will generally be readily met, since a reasonable person would regard this kind of abusive conduct as a breach of the trust between two equal partners that is incompatible with an intimate partnership. This misconduct — be it as a single act or as a pattern — undermines an intimate partner’s dignity, autonomy, and equality. Nevertheless, the threshold is an important one as it serves to exclude the rare cases of wrongful conduct arising in intimate partnerships that would not control or isolate the victim.
[15] The intervener National Association of Women and the Law (“NAWL”) warns against the new tort being cast too widely, in a manner that might be “weaponized” against the very survivors of intimate partner violence it seeks to protect (I.F., at para. 5). The example cited before the Court was the act of resistance committed by the survivors of intimate partner violence themselves. Numerous studies have documented that many women who experience abuse respond with violent acts of resistance to defend themselves (see J. B. Kelly and M. P. Johnson, “Differentiation among types of intimate partner violence: Research update and implications for interventions” (2008), 46 Fam. Ct. Rev. 476, at p. 484). That conduct — the response of an abused intimate partner — may or may not be wrongful in its own right under existing torts. But the conduct plainly does not deserve compensation on the basis of a tort of intimate partner violence which is designed to remedy coercive control because, in that case, the survivor’s conduct, on an objective measure, does not have the effect of controlling or depriving their own aggressor of their autonomy. NAWL submits that the new tort should be defined “in a way that centres [on] liberty deprivation” and requires courts to “identify the dominant aggressor” on that basis (I.F., at para. 3). An overinclusive tort not centered on coercive control could capture acts of resistance, thereby inappropriately enabling abusers to bring a claim against survivors of intimate partner violence under the new tort. Requiring survivors to defend themselves against these claims could have the perverse effect of deterring them from advancing claims against their abusers, thereby raising unintended barriers of access to justice.
[16] To be sure, any wrongful act of violence by either partner arising in an intimate partnership that causes physical or psychological harm can give rise to tort liability. Absent coercive control, other forms of violence between intimate partners are already recognized by existing torts. The existing law recognizes that these wrongs should command higher damage awards in a family setting — in some cases aggravated damages and even punitive awards — than the same act committed between strangers because it constitutes a breach of the trust that animates intimate partnerships. The Court of Appeal observed that “the higher damage award reflects an emerging understanding of the evils of intimate partner violence and its harms” (para. 128; see, e.g., Shaw v. Shaw, 2012 ONSC 590, 9 R.F.L. (7th) 359; Jane Doe 72511 v. M. (N.), 2018 ONSC 6607, 143 O.R. (3d) 277, at paras. 117-18). As the Court of Appeal properly explained in this case, “[a] new tort is not required when the only difference from established torts is the quantum of damages” (para. 52). By contrast, coercive control as a distinct manifestation of intimate partner violence is not acknowledged as a wrong under existing torts and cannot be addressed through aggravated damages. It is this identifiable gap that justifies the creation of a new tort at common law because even the higher damage awards called for by the Court of Appeal do not address this distinct wrong of coercion and the specific harm it causes. As it stands, the common law must evolve, incrementally, to fill this gap in order to provide redress for the coercive and controlling violence that survivors, such as Ms. Ahluwalia, have suffered, as reflected in the facts she has alleged and proven.
[17] The intimate partner is not simply seeking compensation for the physical and psychological bruises that are recognized by existing torts; in effect, they are alleging “I am not just a bruised spouse, I am an unfree spouse”. The new tort is designed to recognize that gap in the law and to equip judges with resources in the private law toolbox to respond to the distinctive wrong of intimate partner coercive control and the distinctive injury to victims’ autonomy that goes beyond the physical and psychological losses it brings in the intimate partner setting. This is a matter of access to justice, as the interveners the Attorney General of Canada and the Attorney General of British Columbia submit (I.F., Attorney General of Canada, at para. 2; I.F., Attorney General of British Columbia, at para. 26). Plaintiffs seeking damages arising from intimate partner violence need not navigate the patchwork of torts nor plead any specific tort, as it is not their task “to attach the appropriate legal label to the facts” (Lawrence v. Peel Regional Police Force (2005), 2005 CanLII 3934 (ON CA), 250 D.L.R. (4th) 287 (Ont. C.A.), at para. 5; S. Beswick, “The Cause of Action in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia” (2025), 55 Advocates’ Q. 429, at p. 434). That task falls to the court. This is particularly true in family law proceedings, in which judges have an important case management role to facilitate access to justice for self-represented litigants (Sethi v. Sethi, 2025 ONSC 5079, 19 R.F.L. (9th) 299, at paras. 46-49, citing Frick v. Frick, 2016 ONCA 799, 132 O.R. (3d) 321, at para. 11). Where plaintiffs plead material facts that disclose coercive control, judges, with the benefit of this new tort, will be in a position to grant remedies that address the full scope of the harm suffered, rather than confining such claims to a patchwork of existing torts that, even with aggravated damages, provide only incomplete redress.
[18] Moreover, and contrary to Mr. Ahluwalia’s submissions, the recognition of the intentional tort of intimate partner violence is consistent with the accepted framework for the incremental development of the common law of torts. In identifying the basis for recognizing a new tort, I am guided by the analysis undertaken in a leading appellate case in Ontario, Jones v. Tsige, 2012 ONCA 32, 108 O.R. (3d) 241, in which Sharpe J.A. recognized a novel tort where, like here, the facts “cry out for a remedy” (para. 69). A new tort cannot be created from whole cloth but must reflect an emerging acceptance in legal sources that justifies the incremental change in the law (see Merrifield v. Canada (Attorney General), 2019 ONCA 205, 145 O.R. (3d) 494, at para. 25). Like in Jones, the trial judge here relied on a wide range of legal sources to support the conclusion that existing torts were inadequate to answer the intimate partner violence made out by Ms. Ahluwalia. Also, like in Jones, the trial judge observed an emerging consensus in the law that allowed for the advent of a new tort as a complete remedy for the wrong Ms. Ahluwalia suffered. I recognize further that, in any given case, the parties’ pleadings and the evidence presented shape how far a court can and should go in taking up its properly cautious role of expanding, or not, the basic law of torts. In this instance, the recognition of the new tort rests on the pleadings and the evidence of the varied forms of coercive control in the Ahluwalia marriage as found by the trial judge. In recalling this fundamental point, I do not foreclose the possibility that the common law of torts may continue to evolve to redress violence within family relationships on the basis of different facts pleaded in future cases, including violence against other family members, such as children and elders, as well as forms of intimate partner abuse not raised by Ms. Ahluwalia.
[19] In arguing that the established torts are adequate here, Mr. Ahluwalia makes two identifiable errors of method. First, he neglects to consider how intimate partnerships themselves contribute to defining the very nature of the civil wrong which the law currently fails to answer fully. The intimate partnership forms an essential element of the new tort of intimate partner violence because it indicates how conduct that might otherwise amount to battery, assault, or IIED grounds a distinct cause of action in this setting. As tortious conduct, intimate partner violence can only be understood with due regard to the economic and emotional interdependence, and the attending vulnerabilities, that characterize intimate partnerships and set them apart from arm’s-length relationships. An intimate partnership is at once a place where people can flourish as partners and one that exposes their vulnerability; as L’Heureux-Dubé J. wrote in dissent in Canada (Attorney General) v. Mossop, 1993 CanLII 164 (SCC), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 554, at p. 633, families can be both a site for “individual fulfilment” and for “oppression”. Intimacy can provide privacy that gives peace and safety for the couple who find strength together in a shared life. But as recalled by my colleague Karakatsanis J. in Barendregt v. Grebliunas, 2022 SCC 22, [2022] 1 S.C.R. 517, at para. 144, privacy can be an obstacle to proving abuse because family violence “often takes place behind closed doors”. Unlike the Court of Appeal, the trial judge rightly recognized that the tortious conduct in question was so inextricably bound up in the “context” of the intimate relationship that the relationship had to be recognized as an element thereof (para. 52).
[20] Second, Mr. Ahluwalia fails to consider how the typically gendered character of the conduct — a matter for which there is emerging acceptance in the legal authorities — fundamentally shapes the law’s understanding of the coercive wrong and the resulting injury which the novel tort is designed to answer in intimate partnerships. This Court has underscored the gendered character of intimate partner violence in the past. As my colleague Martin J. wrote in Michel v. Graydon, 2020 SCC 24, [2020] 2 S.C.R. 763, at para. 95, “[w]omen in relationships are more likely to suffer intimate partner violence than their male counterparts” (see also Government of Canada statistics explained in P. Gupta, “Private Wrongs, Public Impact: The Case for a Tort of Family Violence” (2025), 36:2 Can. J. Fam. L. 185, at p. 187; D. Sowter and J. Koshan, “‘Weaponizing’ The Tort of Family Violence? Myths, Stereotypes, Lawyers’ Ethics and Access to Justice” (2024), 40 Windsor Y.B. Access Just. 311, at p. 315). Gendered assumptions and the discounting of the intimate partner context can lead to a misapprehension and an underestimation of harm in tort, particularly in cases of non-physical abuse (S. Eisen, “Damages for Spousal Violence — Why are They So Low?” (2024), 43 C.F.L.Q. 181, at pp. 195-96). Some scholars have helpfully argued that a proper understanding of the typically gendered character of civil liability for intimate partner violence requires a [translation] “feminist reconceptualization of the principles of extracontractual liability” (L. Langevin and N. Des Rosiers, with the collaboration of M.-P. Nadeau, L’indemnisation des victimes de violence sexuelle et conjugale (2nd ed. 2012), at para. 11). I agree. This encourages the adoption of analytical tools that help bring to light both the coercive wrong and the harm associated with intimate partner violence — something that existing torts, without the benefit of this perspective, have not adequately done. To be clear: this is not to say women are the only victims of intimate partner violence, but women’s experiences of the deprivation of autonomy and inequality draw into focus the coercive nature of this new tort and the wrong it seeks to address for all intimate partners who face comparable vulnerabilities.
[21] These two methodological concerns — the setting of intimate partnerships, and the typically gendered character of the wrong to dignity, autonomy, and equality caused by coercive control — go to the core of facts pleaded by Ms. Ahluwalia and her cause of action in tort. Accommodating these perspectives cannot be done by adopting a new attitude to calculating damages for existing torts. They call for the identification of a new tort of intimate partner violence, alive to coercion and control in intimate partnerships as a civil wrong, and the resulting harm to dignity, autonomy, and equality — experienced chiefly by women — as the harm itself. As one scholar observed, “coercive control is . . . designed to stifle and co-opt women’s new freedoms and opportunities for independence; . . . close the spaces in which they can reflect critically on their lives; and reimpose obsolete forms of dependence and personal service by micromanaging the enactment of stereotypic gender roles through ‘sexism with a vengeance’” (E. Stark, Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (2nd ed. 2023), at p. 243).
[22] The Court of Appeal’s principal objection to the trial judge’s recognition of a new tort here was that the existing torts provided an adequate remedy for Ms. Ahluwalia’s claim. Some of the court’s criticism of the trial judge’s reasoning strikes me as appropriate. I agree, for example, that some patterns of tortious conduct that include long-term physical and emotional abuse can be captured by existing torts. However, in my respectful view, the Court of Appeal’s decision not to recognize a new tort amounted to a reviewable error of law on two bases. First, it neglected to identify that the core feature of Ms. Ahluwalia’s claim rested on the distinct wrong of coercive control, and the distinct harm to her interests in dignity, autonomy, and equality in the relationship at issue. These are the gaps in the existing torts that justify a new tort of intimate partner violence. Second, it erred by stretching existing torts beyond their doctrinal limits to accommodate Ms. Ahluwalia’s claim, rather than recognizing a more narrowly tailored new tort. Existing torts, even where addressed through higher or aggravated damage awards, cannot accommodate the coercive character of the wrong addressed here.
[23] The evidence accepted at trial points to this civil wrong and the resulting harm that were distinct from those associated with the existing torts. I reject Mr. Ahluwalia’s submission before the Court of Appeal that the trial judge invented the occasion to create a new tort in a manner that was procedurally unfair and unsupported by argument. Ms. Ahluwalia, self-represented for the better part of the trial proceedings, consistently rested her claim, in part, on Mr. Ahluwalia’s controlling nature, conduct that the trial judge recognized as a “pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour” (para. 32). Ms. Ahluwalia’s pleadings and the evidence she presented substantiate the fact that her losses were not confined to physical and psychological harm, but also reflect the fact that she had been dominated by Mr. Ahluwalia’s will throughout the marriage.
[24] The trial judge properly concluded that the existing torts would incompletely address the wrong and the harm associated with intimate partner violence. I agree that some of the impugned abusive conduct resulting in physical and psychological injury were “included” in Mr. Ahluwalia’s pattern of coercive and controlling conduct during the marriage (trial reasons, at paras. 103 and 111). However, most respectfully, in my view, the compensatory damages required to remedy the new tort could not be the identical amount as that for existing torts.
[25] In the result, and given the settlement between the parties, the quantum of damages Mr. Ahluwalia owes Ms. Ahluwalia remains at $100,000, as determined by the Court of Appeal. I would specify that the amount represents compensatory damages awarded to correct the loss Ms. Ahluwalia suffered as a result of the tort of intimate partner violence on that basis alone, and not for the “included” torts of assault, battery, and IIED. I would set aside the portion of the order of the Court of Appeal that declined to recognize a new tort in this case and leave undisturbed, as on appeal, the trial judge’s conclusions relating to the other remedies ordered. I propose therefore to allow the appeal in part, without any order as to costs.
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