Torts: Intimate Partner Violence
Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2023 ONCA 476, 2026 SCC 16 (41061)
“The husband abused the wife over their entire 16-year marriage. The abusive conduct was sustained and varied in character. It included physical assaults, humiliation, intimidation, and conduct intending to inflict emotional distress; it extended to isolation of the wife from family members, mistreatment as a means of pressure for sex, and financial control. The husband’s conduct had coerced and controlled the wife in order to break her will and condition her to obey him from the beginning of their marriage.
The husband initiated divorce proceedings. The wife agreed to the divorce and sought sole decision-making authority for the children, child support, spousal support, property equalization, and sale of the matrimonial home. The wife also requested an order for damages for the abuse she suffered at the hands of the husband. In addition to the family law remedies, the wife was awarded $50,000 in compensatory damages, $50,000 in aggravated damages and $50,000 in punitive 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 for the included torts of assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Before the Court of Appeal, the husband conceded that his abusive conduct gave rise to liability under existing torts. He nevertheless successfully obtained a reduction of the damages awarded at trial by $50,000, the amount the trial judge had awarded as punitive damages. While the Court of Appeal recognized family violence as a pervasive social problem, it made a declaration that no new tort of domestic violence or coercive control should be recognized. In its view, the trial judge erred in deciding that existing torts were not flexible enough to encompass the pattern of abuse at issue and that a new tort of family violence was required.”
The SCC (6:3) allowed the appeal in part.
Justice Kasirer wrote as follows (at paras. 4-9, 13-14, 24-25):
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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. 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.”