Articles 2021

In Brazeau v. Canada, 2019 ONSC 1888, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded $20 million in damages for class-wide systemic Charterbreaches following a successful summary judgment motion by the class

Lessons learned from the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision in Das v George Weston Limited regarding dispositive motions and costs awards.

A recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal suggests that the court cannot go beyond simply approving or rejecting a proposed settlement or class counsel’s fees, to unilaterally impose amendments to better achieve what the court views as a fair result.

In Jeffrey v. London Life, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that when a class action results in a monetary award that benefits class members – even if they have no “right” to that award – class counsel’s contingency fee may charged against and paid from that award.

In Houle v St. Jude Medical Inc., the Ontario Divisional Court upheld a decision conditionally approving a litigation funding agreement in a products liability class action.

In its first decision of the year, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that arbitration clauses in Uber’s contracts with its drivers were void, and that a proposed class action against Uber could proceed.

In Broutzas v. Rouge Valley Health System, an Ontario court reaffirmed the tight and narrow parameters of the tort of intrusion on seclusion and the limitations on its use to justify a privacy class action.

Even in class actions, there comes a time when enough is enough and the civil justice system will no longer tolerate an inordinate and inexplicable delay. In Smith v Armstrong et al, 2018 ONSC 2435, R.S.J. Gordon granted the federal defendants’ motion to dismiss a proposed class action for delay and found the plaintiff’s delay to be inordinate where the litigation had not advanced to the certification stage after 17 years.

Multi-jurisdictional class actions in Canada continue to create problems for parties and the courts. Recently, the problems associated with multi-jurisdictional class actions resulted in the scuttling of a national class action settlement involving the prescription drugs OxyContin and OxyNeo. Despite three other courts approving the settlement in their respective jurisdictions, the Saskatchewan court in Perdikaris v Purdue Pharma Inc., refused to approve the same settlement.

In Amaya, the Quebec Court of Appeal reinforced the legislative purpose of the leave requirement in secondary market class actions, as being the protection of public issuers and their long-term shareholders, and not the plaintiff-shareholders., holding that "the purpose of the screening mechanism [is] to deter opportunistic or abusive litigation by plaintiff-shareholders who inappropriately wish to take advantage of the favourable conditions for secondary market actions against issuers."