Articles 2025

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.

For those who were unable to attend the recent WSIAT stakeholder event, the notes below touch upon the highlights of each presentation from the event.

Mentorship is one of the most important and least discussed components of the legal community, which largely influences the growth of newer generations of lawyers by the help of older ones.

This article is a culmination of the experiences of a young lawyer. More specifically, it’s about the traits that have allowed him to thrive as a solo attorney in the competitive world of law.

A sole-practitioner's outlook on practice during the time of Covid.