In Caja Paraguyaya De Jubilaciones Y Pensiones Del Personal De Itaipu Binacional v. Obregon, the Court clarified the issue of whether the civil standard for stay pending appeal, or the criminal standard for bail pending appeal, applies to a party being held in civil contempt. The Court held that the proper procedure is to apply the civil standard for stay pending appeal, but the factors in the RJR-MacDonald test can be influenced by the principles underlying applications for bail pending appeal as outlined in R. v. Oland.
In 402 Mulock Investments Inc. v. Wheelhouse Coatings Inc., the Court was asked by a Landlord to determine whether a deposit held by the Landlord had been wrongfully ordered to be returned to the Tenant pursuant to the default provision of the Lease. The Court determined that, as the Tenant was in default under the Lease, the Landlord should not have been ordered to return the deposit. The Court also considered the Tenant’s cross-appeal, where the Tenant sought relief from paying for roof repairs, amortized over the course of two years. The Court held that the repairs to the roof were properly a capital repair pursuant to the Lease, and therefore should be amortized over its useful life.
In Fair v. BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., a claim by a disappointed beneficiary of certain investment accounts of her late husband, the Court upheld the motion judge’s determination that a bank or financial adviser do not owe a duty to their customer to disclose the fact that their partner had changed the beneficiary designation on their registered investment accounts, even though the bank/financial adviser had both of them as clients and had shared information about both of them to the other in the past. To recognize such a duty would be contrary to the concurrent obligations of confidentiality that a bank/financial adviser has to its clients.
Other topics this week included the Court’s review of a motion judge’s decision to deny an extension of time for perfecting an appeal, an appeal that was dismissed as being vexatious (congratulations to our very own Sheldon Inkol on that one), a Will challenge and an appeal of a power of sale as being fraudulent and improvident.
Finally, the second edition of Civil Procedure and Practice Ontario (CPPO) is now live on CanLII’s website. For those who may not know, CPPO offers to the public, the profession and the judiciary, a free online set of annotated Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as the Courts of Justice Act and the Limitations Act, 2002, complete with commentary and case law. The project was coordinated by Professor Noel Semple of Windsor Law School, and the chapters were written by a host of prominent and knowledgeable practitioners and judges. I had the privilege of co-authoring the chapters on references (Rules 54 and 55).
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