Articles 2025

Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of October 18, 2021.

Recent case law in Ontario illustrates how the Courts exercise their gatekeeping function to ensure litigants in Will challenges meet a minimum evidentiary threshold. These cases provide important guidance for counsel and parties preparing for similar threshold motions.

A quick review of Elder Law - it's a broader term than you may think.

Plaintiffs generally have great flexibility in how they choose to frame their causes of action without court interference. If a plaintiff chooses to structure their litigation in an unconventional manner, they alone bear the risk of an unfavourable outcome. However, as recently confirmed by the Divisional Court in Pinon v Ottawa, in the context of a class action it is appropriate for the court to consider how pleadings are framed when deciding the preferable procedure criterion under the CPA.

Justice Belobaba released the first decision to interpret and apply s. 4.1 of the CPA in Dufault v TD Bank, making clear that defendants now have a presumptive right to have a potentially dispositive motion, or a motion that may narrow the issues or evidence in a proposed class proceeding, heard before certification.

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.