The fire destroyed the house, and the insurer refused to pay. The property still contained furniture and belongings, and its owner had been visiting with an intention to return. The question before the New Brunswick Court of King's Bench was whether that made it an occupied home for the purpose of the policy's vacancy exclusion. The answer mattered because the exclusion turned on more than whether the building had furniture in it.
In Trecartin v. Sonnet Insurance Company, 2026 NBKB 96, the court granted summary judgment to Sonnet on the vacancy exclusion. The decision, as described in detailed, independently corroborated reports by Foster & Company, Field Law and Insurance Business, concerned a November 2021 fire at a home in Nerepis, New Brunswick. Sonnet argued that coverage was excluded because the house had been vacant for the required period. It also advanced separate arguments about alleged misrepresentation in the original online application and an undisclosed material change in risk when the property was supplied with generator power. Those arguments did not all succeed.
The vacancy definition could be satisfied in either of two ways. One concerned whether the house held sufficient furniture and household belongings to make it habitable. The other concerned whether all residents had moved out without intending to return. The owner could point to substantial furnishings, so the first part was not decisive. His difficulty was that he had been living elsewhere for a prolonged period under parole conditions and was not residing at the property. Visits, including some overnight stays, did not establish that he was a resident whose intention to return prevented the other part of the definition from applying. The exclusion therefore defeated coverage despite the house remaining furnished. That is a policy wording issue, not a general rule that any unoccupied house is uninsured after a set number of days.
The court's treatment of the other two defences makes this more than a vacancy case. Sonnet alleged that the policyholder had incorrectly represented the home as owner occupied when he applied for insurance. The insurer could not produce the actual online application from 2021 showing the precise questions asked and answers given. It instead relied on a later application template and information drawn from its internal records. According to the published analyses, those materials were inadequate to prove the alleged misrepresentation. The problem wasn't that online applications were inherently unreliable. It was that the insurer could not establish the contemporaneous words the applicant had actually seen and supplied.
Sonnet also argued that disconnecting public utility electricity and relying on a generator was a material change in the risk that should have been disclosed. That argument failed on the evidence described in the independent accounts. The insurer's affidavit material contained factual inaccuracies and did not adequately establish both the alleged materiality of the change and the insured's knowledge of its significance. The ultimate result therefore shouldn't be reported as a victory for Sonnet on every coverage defence it advanced. It prevailed because one exclusion was established, while its alternative arguments exposed weaknesses in the proof.
For property insurers, the practical lesson is that underwriting systems are also future evidence systems. When an applicant completes a digital form, the insurer may later need the precise form displayed at that date, the answer submitted and the audit trail linking those two things. A database field showing the eventual occupancy classification is not necessarily a reliable substitute for the original application question. Claims and coverage personnel should understand what the organization actually preserves, including how old versions of an application can be reconstructed when a policy is contested years later.
Policyholders have a different lesson to take from the same dispute. Keeping a home furnished, visiting it occasionally and intending to move back may not satisfy a policy definition that focuses on the presence of residents. Someone whose living arrangements change because of extended travel, work, family circumstances or another reason should review the vacancy and occupancy conditions before assuming the usual property coverage remains unchanged. But the scope and effect of any exclusion depend on its own words. Nothing in this case should be converted into a universal Canadian vacancy rule.
There is also a broader claims handling implication. An insurer can ultimately establish one valid coverage defence while failing to prove others, and the unsuccessful grounds still deserve careful internal review. When there is a disagreement about an application answer or a change in risk, the file should distinguish verified facts from assumptions created by incomplete electronic records. A sound system protects both sides of that inquiry because it records what happened rather than simply what someone now believes happened.
Source limitation: Binder Insurance could not independently retrieve the complete judgment from the public CanLII link during this review. The procedural result and material findings above were checked against the detailed published accounts of Foster & Company, Field Law and Insurance Business. The decision is reported as Trecartin v. Sonnet Insurance Company, 2026 NBKB 96. Specific wording and reasoning should be checked against the full judgment before relying on this as legal authority.