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A B.C. couple has taken a fight with their insurance company all the way to the B.C. Court of Appeal arguing over the definition of "within your dwelling."

The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company had refused to pay out a claim from Amritpal and Baljit Gill when their home suffered water damage in December 2019.

According to a Feb. 27 Court of Appeal for B.C. decision, the water damage came from a blocked drain located on the property's sundeck.

While the Surrey couple had insurance, Wawanesa refused to pay out for the damage because it said the insurance only covered water backup "within your dwelling" and the drain was located on the sundeck and therefore outside of the property.

The sundeck extends almost the entire width of the house and has a ceiling with light fixtures and contains a swimming pool, but is open to the outdoors.

After Wawanesa refused to pay, the couple took them to court arguing the sundeck was part of the building and therefore was part of their dwelling.

However, in June 2022, the B.C. Supreme Court sided with the insurance company and dismissed the case.

The Gills then took the case all the way to the Appeal Court of B.C. arguing the judge got it wrong and the sundeck was within their dwelling and the insurance company should cough up.

"Wawanesa submits that the judge made no error in concluding that an average person would interpret the word 'within' to mean inside exterior walls and that therefore the sun deck was not 'within [the] dwelling,'" the decision reads.

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However, the panel of Court of Appeal justices saw it differently.

The Court of Appeal found the original judge had misinterpreted the term "within your dwelling."

The Justice parses through the language in the insurance policy.

"The policy defined dwelling as the building. The building included the sun deck, as admitted by Wawanesa. The sun deck therefore was included in the definition of dwelling," Court of Appeal Justice Susan Griffin said in the decision.

"The judge focused on one part of the definition of 'within' from the Oxford English Dictionary, as meaning 'inside.' His analysis then equated 'inside' to 'indoors,'" the justice said.

The Justice said the word "within" does not always mean indoors.

"It simply begs the question: within what? For example, to be 'within Canada,' or 'inside Canada' means to be anywhere in Canada, whether indoors or outdoors," Justice Griffin said.

The Justice then goes on to analyze the phase "within your dwelling" as it's written in the insurance policy.

"Based on the definition of the dwelling as the building wholly or partially occupied as a private residence, an object on the sun deck was within the dwelling. This is so whether or not the sun deck was entirely enclosed from the elements. The drain on the sun deck was therefore within the dwelling," the justice said.

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Ultimately, the court sided with the Gills and overruled the earlier court decision leaving Wawanesa to pay up for the flood damage.

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