Articles 2023

In this series, we ask one seasoned litigator and one litigator just starting out the same questions. We often forget that many of our colleagues are coming from different perspectives when approaching a file, a client, or an intra-office interaction. We hope these questions and answers will help illuminate how lawyers, both senior and junior, navigate the practice of health law.

After a lengthy and complicated dispute between members of the Hamilton branch of the Royal Yugoslav Army Combatants’ Association in Canada-Draza Mihailovic (the “RYACA”), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its September 1, 2021 decision concerning membership and decision-making rights concerning property owned by RYACA in Varjacic et al. v Radoja et al.

The article summarizes the Public Sector Lawyers Section session on Ethical Challenges in Public Law, which took place in June 2021, and featured Professor Elizabeth Sanderson.

The article discusses the presentation of the Tom Marshall award in June 2021 to Paul Dubé, current Ombudsman of Ontario.

Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of October 12, 2021.

Copyright owners have difficulty enforcing their rights against users of pirating software because the maximum recovery from each pirate is often too small to cover the copyright holder’s legal expenses. Meanwhile, there are often thousands, sometimes millions of acts of infringement. If the pirates had the cause of action, this might appear to be ideal for a class action. But can a class be the defendants? In Salna v Voltage Pictures, LLC, the Federal Court of Appeal appears to have said yes.

This article summarizes the divisional court's decision in Morningstar v. WSIAT and the history of the decisions at the WSIAT.

In Nasogaluak v. Canada and BigEagle v. Canada, the Federal Court reached differing outcomes on Certification, a puzzling result given the similarities between the two cases. How and why did the Court reach different decisions on two similar cases? The devil is in the details. While Plaintiffs' counsel may be tempted to frame class actions broadly to increase class size, the two decisions offer a reminder that less can sometimes be best, particularly where the claims involve novel elements.

This article examines the strategy for employers in reducing claim costs by characterizing obesity as a pre-existing condition for the purposes of claiming cost relief from the Second Injury and Enhancement Fund (SIEF). In reviewing recent caselaw from the WSIAT this article finds that obesity will be grounds for SIEF cost relief only where treating physicians have linked a worker's obesity to the work-related injury or its treatment.