Aaron B. Harnett

The landlords appealed a decision of the Landlord and Tenant Board dismissing their application to evict a tenant for the landlord's own use under s. 48(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act.

The landlords intended for their son, a university student in London, to occupy the Toronto unit on weekends and during the summer for five years.

The Board found this occasional occupation did not constitute 'residential occupation'.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, holding that the Board's interpretation and application of the statutory condition was reasonable.

The accused brought a pre-trial motion seeking to exclude eyewitness identification evidence from the victim of an armed robbery.

The defence argued the identification was unreliable due to flaws in a photo array lineup and a subsequent inconsistent identification in a later sequential lineup.

The court held that although the initial lineup had imperfections, those issues affected the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility.

The judge concluded that the witness had a meaningful opportunity to observe the perpetrator and that any reliability concerns could be addressed through cross-examination and careful jury instructions.

The appellant appealed a conviction entered by the Ontario Court of Justice.

The trial judge had stated that the complainant's viva voce evidence was totally uncontradicted.

The Court of Appeal found this to be a dispositive error, as the appellant's videotaped statement, introduced by the Crown, contained specific denials of the conduct attributed to him.

The trial judge failed to resolve these conflicts and failed to apply the W.D. principles.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial was ordered.

The appellant appealed his conviction for a home invasion, arguing that the trial judge's decision should receive less deference due to prior errors, that the trial judge misapprehended identification evidence, and that the reasons were inadequate.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that prior corrections do not affect deference, the trial judge made no substantive error in using a tattoo and gold tooth covers as identification evidence, and the reasons were brief but adequate.

The sentence appeal was abandoned.

The appellant challenged the constitutionality of the Criminal Code procedure governing seizure of documents from a lawyer's office during a criminal investigation.

The court held that solicitor-client privilege attracts the highest level of protection and that a statutory search procedure must impair that confidentiality only minimally.

Section 488.1 failed that standard because privilege could be lost automatically through lawyer inaction, because the provision required disclosure of the client's name to the state in order to claim privilege, and because it permitted Crown inspection of the impugned document on the privilege application.

The court concluded that the mandated procedure produced an unreasonable search and seizure contrary to s. 8 and, absent any s. 1 justification, declared the provision unconstitutional and of no force and effect.

The Crown appealed a trial judgment staying marijuana cultivation and possession charges against an accused who used marijuana to control severe epilepsy.

The court held that criminally prohibiting possession and cultivation of marijuana for necessary medical use deprived the respondent of liberty and security of the person, and that the deprivation did not accord with the principles of fundamental justice because the statutory scheme provided only illusory or unfettered access to lawful medical use.

The court found the ministerial exemption power in s. 56 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act constitutionally insufficient to save the blanket prohibition.

The trial stay was upheld, but the reading-in remedy was set aside and the possession prohibition in s. 4 was declared invalid, with the declaration suspended for one year and a personal exemption granted during the suspension.