Articles 2021

Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of March 7, 2022.

This article outlines the "Ontario HVAC Scam," which exploits loopholes in consumer protection laws and the real property registration system to dupe unsuspecting homeowners.

In a motion to pursue a class action against the Ontario Provincial Police brought by Caledonia residents arising from Caledonia’s road and rail blockade by protestors in 2020, the Superior Court invalidated the mandatory stay arising from section 17 of the CLPA due to its inconsistency with section 96 of the Constitution Act.

In Greenwood, the Federal Court of Appeal certified a claim in systemic negligence. While this may be surprising to some given existing jurisprudence suggesting that negligence for workplace harassment claims are not viable causes of action, in this case certification of this cause of action rested on a very narrow exception – that the claims belonged to individuals who experienced workplace harassment, but who did not have written or unwritten contracts of employment.

Following are this week’s summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of February 28, 2022.

The trend of rising judicial skepticism towards class action honouraria recently culminated in Doucet v The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a February 11, 2022 decision of Perell J concluding that the practice of granting honouraria is wrong and should be stopped altogether as a matter of legal principle. This article examines the impact or possible impact of Doucet on the practice of granting honouraria in Ontario.