Articles 2020

The May meeting of the Brown Bag Lunchers continued to focus on pandemic-related topics, including concerns regarding remotely executed Wills, best practices for execution, and practical difficulties dealing with banks. Participants also considered the recent and surprising case of Calmusky v. Calmusky, in which the court applied Pecore principles to a RIF beneficiary designation.

At the April 2020 Brown Bag Lunch meeting, attendees discussed recent case law on the possible "carry over" of beneficiary designations when one investment is automatically converted to another, the ongoing state of emergency, and their practices and preferred technology for remote execution of Wills, among other topics.

Summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario released last week.

The Ontario government is championing the "privacy-first" approach that was used in developing COVID Alert, which will be the first government-backed digital contact tracing app to be rolled out in Canada.

The Ontario Court of Appeal in Van Delst v Hronowsky, 2020 ONCA 329 held the Pension Benefits Act, RSO 1990, c P.8 is the default regime for valuing non-Ontario Pensions for family law purposes in Ontario.

Summaries of last week’s civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code states a person is guilty of a violent offence, even if they were so intoxicated that they did not know what they were doing, so long as that intoxication was self-induced. This month, the Ontario Court of Appeal declared the provision of no force or effect, declaring s. 33.1 unconstitutional for violating sections 7 and 11(d) of the Charter. This note summarizes this important decision.