Supreme Court recognizes intimate partner violence tort centred on coercive control

The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized a new common-law tort of intimate partner violence, allowing compensation for coercive control that deprives a partner of dignity, autonomy and equality within the relationship.

In Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16, decided May 15, the court allowed an Ontario woman’s appeal in part and made her former husband liable under the new tort. Six judges supported the result, but only five endorsed the majority’s precise formulation of the claim.

The ruling did not increase the $100,000 payable to Kuldeep Kaur Ahluwalia. The parties had settled the amount before the Supreme Court appeal. Instead, the court changed the legal basis of liability and classified the entire sum as general compensatory damages for intimate partner violence.

A distinct harm beyond individual incidents

The case arose from divorce proceedings in Ontario. The trial judge found that Amrit Pal Singh Ahluwalia had subjected his wife to a sustained pattern of physical, psychological and financial abuse during their 16-year marriage. Those factual findings were no longer disputed before the Supreme Court.

The trial judge recognized a broader tort of family violence and awarded $150,000: $50,000 each in compensatory, aggravated and punitive damages. The Ontario Court of Appeal rejected the new tort, upheld liability under existing causes of action and removed the punitive component, leaving $100,000.

Justice Kasirer, writing for Chief Justice Wagner and Justices Martin, O’Bonsawin and Moreau, concluded that existing torts did not fully address the particular wrong of coercive control. Assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress could compensate for aspects of abuse, but not the distinct deprivation of a partner’s autonomy.

The majority did not say existing torts could never address patterns of conduct. Its concern was that even a pattern-based claim could leave the injury caused by domination and subordination unrecognized. Increasing damages for physical or psychological harm was not, in its view, a complete answer to that different injury.

The new tort is narrower than the trial judge’s family-violence formulation. It concerns intimate partnerships and their aftermath, not every relationship within a family. Marriage or cohabitation is not essential; the court emphasized the substance of a sustained relationship involving intimacy and interdependence.

What a claimant must prove

The majority established three elements: abusive conduct arising in an intimate partnership or its aftermath; the defendant’s intentional engagement in that conduct; and conduct that objectively amounts to coercive control. The claimant bears the civil burden of proving those elements on a balance of probabilities.

The claimant need not prove that the defendant subjectively intended to control the partner or cause a particular injury. The relevant intention concerns the conduct itself. A judge must then assess whether a reasonable person, aware of the relationship’s context, would view the conduct as an assertion of control that undermined the other partner’s dignity, autonomy and equality.

Once those elements are established, no separate proof of consequential physical or psychological injury is required to establish liability. The majority reasoned that the harm to dignity and autonomy follows from the wrong itself. The amount of compensation nevertheless depends on the circumstances and extent of harm; the decision does not establish a standard $100,000 payment for future claims.

Coercive control can involve financial restrictions, isolation, surveillance, intimidation or misuse of litigation after separation, as well as physical or psychological violence. A repeated pattern is not indispensable: a single act can qualify when its significance in the relationship objectively amounts to coercive control.

The majority also drew limits. An unhappy or dysfunctional relationship is not enough, and judges must not mistake a victim’s resistance to domination for coercive control. Nor does a person’s ability to make some independent decisions, including eventually leaving, necessarily defeat a claim.

Recognizing the tort does not automatically settle limitation-period questions. Kasirer acknowledged that extending statutory exemptions to the new cause of action could require legislative action.

One concurrence sought a broader remedy

Justice Karakatsanis agreed that a new intimate partner violence tort was necessary and concurred in the result. She would have made its third element broader, allowing recovery for either coercive control or acts or threats of violence causing physical or psychological harm in an intimate partnership.

In her view, violence by an intimate partner involves a distinctive breach of trust even when it does not establish coercive control. Requiring survivors, often without lawyers, to navigate that concept or several existing torts could make compensation harder to obtain.

The majority considered coercive control an essential limit that kept the new tort focused on the gap in existing law and reduced the risk of retaliatory claims against survivors. Karakatsanis did not regard that risk as a sufficient reason for the narrower approach, pointing to contextual assessment and established defences such as self-defence.

Dissent questioned the need for a new tort

Justice Jamal, joined by Justices Côté and Rowe, would have dismissed the appeal. They did not dispute the seriousness of the abuse or Ahluwalia’s entitlement to compensation. They concluded that existing torts, applied sensitively with aggravated damages, already provided a full remedy on these facts.

The dissent argued that courts should recognize new torts only when necessary to resolve a concrete dispute. It also raised procedural concerns about how the new cause of action emerged at trial and objected to the majority’s reassessment of the basis for damages when the parties had agreed not to contest them. Jamal warned that the new test could create uncertainty about evidence, compensation and limitation periods rather than simplify access to justice.

Kasirer answered that the amount of damages and the legal basis for liability were distinct issues. The Court of Appeal’s declaration rejecting a new tort remained open to challenge. He also concluded that the pleaded facts and evidence had put coercive control in issue and that the trial judge’s handling of the claim had caused no procedural prejudice.

The result leaves the $50,000 punitive award removed by the Court of Appeal unrestored. The Supreme Court instead recast the damages provision of the trial order as $100,000 in general compensatory damages for the new tort, without an additional aggravated award. It made no order for costs in the Supreme Court and left the trial costs order undisturbed.

The majority also kept tort compensation separate from support and property remedies, which serve different purposes. Judges may decide the appropriate sequence for addressing those claims rather than always starting with statutory entitlements. The other divorce-related conclusions, which were not in issue in the appeal, remained undisturbed.