Alexandra Hoy

The appellant appealed his convictions on two counts of dangerous driving causing death and one count of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, as well as seeking leave to appeal his sentence.

The trial judge refused to grant an adjournment to allow the appellant to retain counsel, resulting in the appellant proceeding unrepresented.

The trial judge failed to address the appellant's inability to read or write and his limited English proficiency despite being informed of these facts.

The trial judge also improperly directed the defence expert to conduct cross-examination of the Crown's expert.

The Court of Appeal found these errors deprived the appellant of a fair trial and allowed the appeal, ordering a new trial.

The appellant appealed an order of the Superior Court of Justice.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario issued a costs endorsement awarding costs to the appellant in connection with both the appeal and the motion before the motion judge.

The appellant, acting in person, was awarded all-inclusive costs of $4,000 for the appeal and $3,500 for the motion.

The appellant appealed a sentence of seven years imposed for four counts of providing immigration advice without a license contrary to s. 91(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and one count of counselling misrepresentation in an immigration application contrary to s. 126 of the IRPA.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no error in law or principle by the trial judge.

The court upheld the trial judge's decisions regarding denial of enhanced credit for pre-sentence custody due to delay caused by the appellant, reliance on victim impact statements, consideration of future risk, imposition of maximum sentences, consecutive sentencing, and failure to address bail conditions as a mitigating factor.

Two appellants were convicted of first degree murder in the death of Jagtar Gill, who was beaten with a metal bar, stabbed multiple times, and had her throat slashed.

The Crown's theory was that Bhupinderpal Gill (the victim's husband) and Gurpreet Ronald (with whom Gill was having an affair) conspired to commit the murder, with Ronald as the perpetrator.

The trial judge failed to instruct the jury on the included offence of second degree murder for Ronald, leaving only verdicts of guilty of first degree murder or not guilty.

The appellants appealed on the basis that this instruction was erroneous and prejudicial to both their defences.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeals, finding that the trial judge erred in law by failing to leave second degree murder as a possible verdict for Ronald, and that this error tainted the verdict against Gill as well, as it undermined his defence that Ronald acted alone without planning and deliberation.

The appellant appealed the motion judge's order dismissing his action against the respondents (his former legal counsel) under Rule 21.01(3)(d) of the Rules of Civil Procedure as an abuse of process.

The appellant had alleged that the respondents failed to follow his instructions, misled and deceived him, and failed to provide competent legal services in an unjust dismissal case under the Canada Labour Code.

The motion judge found that the same issue had been previously determined by Adjudicator Monteith, whose findings were upheld by the Federal Court on judicial review.

The Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge's decision, finding no error in dismissing the action as an abuse of process and affirming the costs award.

The appellant was convicted of child pornography offences and offences associated with sexual touching of his daughter.

Three series of photographs depicting the victim were found on the Internet.

The appellant admitted to taking innocent photographs but denied taking the pornographic ones and denied distributing any photographs.

He suggested the victim's mother and her new boyfriend had opportunity to commit the offences.

The trial judge rejected the appellant's evidence and found the circumstances consistent with the appellant's guilt with no reasonable alternative inferences.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed the trial judge's decision dismissing his action for wrongful dismissal against his former employer, the Conseil des écoles catholiques du Centre-Est, and for inducing breach of contract against Jason Dupuis, the principal of École secondaire catholique Garneau.

The appellant had worked as a cultural animator since March 7, 2005 and received positive evaluations until 2008.

Thereafter, he received four formal progressive disciplinary measures and numerous warnings for defiant attitude, refusal to perform assigned tasks, and unprofessional conduct.

The trial judge found the employer had just cause for dismissal.

The Court of Appeal upheld the decision, finding no palpable and overriding error in the trial judge's factual findings and credibility assessments.

The appellant was convicted of a single count of sexual assault against his then spouse following a judge-alone trial.

He was acquitted of sexual offences against his children.

The appellant appealed his conviction, challenging the trial judge's dismissal of an application to reopen the trial based on fresh evidence.

The fresh evidence consisted of Day Timer entries suggesting the date of the hysterectomy may have been approximately ten months later than the complainant testified.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, finding no error in principle in the trial judge's assessment that the proposed fresh evidence would not have affected the verdict.

An appeal from an Ontario Review Board disposition regarding a detention order for the appellant.

The appellant challenged two aspects of the Board's decision: (1) whether the Board erred in making a detention order rather than granting some form of discharge, and (2) whether the Board erred in not including a term allowing the appellant to live in community accommodation approved by the hospital.

The Court of Appeal upheld the detention order but found the Board had misapprehended the hospital's evidence regarding a community living provision and failed to consider that evidence.

The appeal was allowed to the extent of inserting a clause permitting community living in hospital-approved accommodation into the detention order.

An appeal from an Ontario Review Board disposition dated January 24, 2019, concerning a detention order for the appellant.

The appellant sought to include a term allowing community living at the Hospital's discretion, arguing it was a viable prospect within the year and would allow placement on a waiting list for community living.

The Board rejected these arguments after full consideration of the evidence.

The Court of Appeal upheld the Board's decision, noting that the Board had expanded the order to permit community access under indirect supervision, which the appellant was utilizing.

The appellant was convicted after trial of firearm and other offences and received a total sentence of 70 months (84 months with 14 months credit for pretrial custody).

The appellant appealed the sentence on grounds including the restraint principle, arguing that a lengthy penitentiary term was unnecessary given his lack of prior incarceration.

The Court of Appeal upheld the sentence as fit, finding that for serious domestic violence offences involving a lethal weapon, deterrence, denunciation, and victim protection must take precedence over the restraint principle.

The court corrected three technical sentencing errors but found no net effect on the total sentence imposed.

The appellant was convicted by jury of possession of heroin for the purposes of trafficking and possession of heroin.

On appeal, the Crown conceded that the trial judge erred by failing to provide a W.D. instruction in the jury charge that would have made clear that a route to acquittal was available even if the jury disbelieved the appellant's evidence.

The appellate court agreed that the curative proviso could not be relied upon.

The appeal was allowed and a new trial was ordered on counts 2 and 3 of the indictment.

A provincially incorporated contractor providing construction services to federally regulated telecommunications companies sought to challenge a provincial labour relations board's certification of its construction technicians as a provincially regulated bargaining unit.

The contractor argued that its construction technicians performed work vital, essential, or integral to federal undertakings and should therefore be subject to federal labour jurisdiction.

The Court of Appeal reversed the Divisional Court's decision, holding that the presumption of provincial jurisdiction over labour relations was not displaced.

The court found that the federal undertaking (Rogers) was not dependent on the contractor's construction technicians, and that the proper focus in derivative jurisdiction analysis is whether the federal undertaking is dependent on the particular employees in question, not whether the work performed is generally important to the federal undertaking.

The appellant appealed from an order of the Superior Court of Justice dismissing his application against his daughters regarding the transfer of a mortgage from a family company to a family trust.

The Court of Appeal determined that it lacked jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the order arose from an oppression application under the Business Corporations Act, for which the proper appellate route is to the Divisional Court, not the Court of Appeal.

The court rejected the appellant's arguments that section 6(2) of the Courts of Justice Act or Rule 6.01(1) of the Rules of Civil Procedure permitted the Court of Appeal to hear the appeal, and declined to reconstitute itself as the Divisional Court.

The appeal was transferred to the Divisional Court.

The appellant mother appealed the decision of the Ontario Superior Court, which had upheld a motion judge's order making three young children Crown wards (now called extended society care) without access to the mother under the Child and Family Services Act.

The appeal judge applied the wrong legislation (CFSA instead of CYFSA) and the wrong summary judgment principles.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal in part, confirming the extended society care order but granting the mother access to the children.

The court found that the motion judge's factual findings regarding the mother's inability to adequately care for the children were sound, but the denial of access was based on improper judicial notice and unsupported assumptions about adoption prospects.

The nature and extent of access were remanded to the Ontario Court of Justice.

The appellant appealed a motion judge's order dismissing her action against the respondents under Rule 21.01(1)(b) of the Rules of Civil Procedure without leave to amend.

The appellant alleged that the respondents breached a settlement agreement by: (1) appealing her WSIB benefits claim in violation of a release clause, and (2) breaching confidentiality provisions by disclosing settlement agreement information in an affidavit filed in a class proceeding.

The motion judge struck both claims and dismissed the action against the individual respondent.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding it was not plain and obvious that the claims could not succeed, and granted leave to amend the claim against the individual respondent.

The appellant brought a motion to vary a decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario dated June 11, 2019.

The court found that the narrow grounds upon which such a decision may be varied were not present and dismissed the motion.

The appellant appealed the motion judge's order striking his statement of claim and dismissing his action against his daughters and their company.

The appellant sought to challenge the validity of a family trust established in connection with an estate freeze in 2007.

The motion judge had struck the claim on the basis of res judicata, collateral attack, and abuse of process, finding that the appellant could have raised the validity issue in the daughters' prior oppression application but failed to do so.

The Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge's decision, finding that the doctrine of abuse of process alone warranted striking the claim, as allowing the action to proceed would constitute an attempt to relitigate a matter already decided.

The appellant appealed a judgment of the Superior Court of Justice determining that fencing and a retaining wall along Greenfield Avenue in Ottawa constituted "Shared Property" under a Co-Tenancy Agreement dated December 15, 1998, governing a townhouse development known as Kings Landing.

The Court of Appeal upheld the lower court's contractual interpretation, finding no palpable and overriding error and no extricable question of law.

The application judge had correctly articulated and applied the principles of contractual interpretation and read the contract as a whole.

The appeal was dismissed with costs fixed at $20,500 including HST and disbursements.

The appellant was convicted of six offences: conspiracy to traffic firearms, conspiracy to traffic cocaine, possession of a firearm for the purpose of transfer, possession of an unlicensed firearm, possession of a firearm with its serial number removed, and possession of property obtained by crime.

The appeal raised three grounds: the jury selection procedure, the refusal to sever charges, and jury instructions.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal on the jury selection ground, finding that the trial judge erred in ruling he lacked jurisdiction to order exclusion of unsworn jurors while using rotating triers.

The appellant had specifically requested this procedure and was deprived of his chosen option when forced to select between static triers with full exclusion or rotating triers with no exclusion.

The Court found this error could not be cured by the curative proviso and ordered a new trial.