Articles 2020

In today's hot real estate market, buyers may forget that "buyer beware" is more than just a pithy phrase and that caveat emptor continues to apply to the purchase of resale homes. This article gives prospective home buyers a background on their rights and provides tips on how to avoid being caught without recourse if their dream home ends up not being such a dream after all.

Since its inception, copyright law has strived to balance ownership with innovation. The fair use doctrine assists the balance by allowing the use of copyrighted material in certain situations. However, innovations in media have created a new generation of creatives who utilize copyrighted material more frequently in their work and the copyright regime has responded with hostility. This article recommends that in order to remedy these issues, a broader application of fair use is necessary.

A review of the program "Game on: Esports and Video Game Law Primer".

Following are this week’s summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.

A review on the program "5G and Beyond: The Latest in Telecommunications Law".

Courts in Ontario and Alberta have recently issued several significant decisions in privacy class actions. These two decisions followed the prevailing trend of the dismissal of privacy class actions in Canada, in which courts have generally found that there is no evidence of harm, or that the information at issue did not rise to a level that would support the finding of a reasonable expectation of privacy, or both.

The new legislative requirement that common issues “predominate” over individual issues in order to certify a class action will serve to intensify attention on potential individual issues at certification. Although Ontario has little judicial authority on individual issues litigation, the authority to date shows that individual issues litigation can be structured to ensure that individual questions will be determined in accessible and effective ways, even in large, complex proceedings.

A recent unanimous decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Kaynes v. BP p.l.c. provides welcome guidance to the class actions bar, as it confirms the circumstances in which an early-stage Rule 21 motion to challenge a statute-barred claim may be appropriate, and clarifies when a claim for fraudulent misrepresentation is discoverable under the Limitations Act.

Following are the summaries of last week's Court of Appeal decisions.

On February 16, 2021, Bill 245, the Accelerating Access to Justice Act, 2021, was introduced by the Ontario government to “improve access to justice for people across the system. If enacted, Bill 245 will make the most sweeping changes to the expropriation process in Ontario in a generation. This article considers the impact of the major proposed changes.