Articles

In July of 2016, the Ontario Court of Appeal, in Southwestern Sales Corp. v. Spurr Bros. Ltd., 2016 ONCA 590, delivered judgment in a case of dismissal of six construction lien actions and one trust action for delay.

In most cases where a lawyer is negligent, the plaintiff has the choice to bring a claim against the lawyer in tort, for professional negligence, or in contract, for breach of the retainer agreement.

As Toronto Lifemagazine does a feature article on how Toronto’s new Super Jail is “the Billion Dollar Hellhole”, I cannot help but reflect on what an incredible value the Construction and Infrastructure’s annual year-end tours are.

Priority disputes can get messy, especially where there are more than one borrower and mortgagee involved; over a dozen lien claimants asserting their priorities; and multiple advances to different parties in different amounts made at different times under different mortgages and credit facilities.

In instances where a party hires a contractor to conduct work on multiple, unrelated projects, the contractor may be owed an undisputed amount on one project, yet the payer may wish to retain this undisputed amount until such time as disputed amounts on a second, unrelated project are addressed.

Ann A. Hatsios writes a moving tribute to her firm mentor, Joel Kuchar of Drudi Alexiou Kuchar LLP.

David Debenham shares his view on how a particular class of self-represented litigants are damaging the legal system.

Nortown was contracted to Burl 9 and Intracorp separately to provide plumbing work on their respective housing subdivision projects, each of which contained several lots.

On April 13, 2016, the Canadian Senate passed the first reading of Bill S-224, An Act respecting payments made under construction contracts, to be known as the Canada Prompt Payment Act. On April 19, Bill S-224 was put on the Order Paper for second reading.

In Employment Professionals Canada Inc. v. Steel Design the Court once again deals with the thorny question of limitation periods where business people decide to forebear on their legal rights, this time in the context of a “prevenient arrangement”. Where labour or materials are supplied under an arrangement or understanding that supplies are provided at a going rate per hour or per item for one project, even if they are not ordered at one time, this is a “prevenient arrangement”.