Alexandra Moser

The plaintiffs requested an urgent case conference after the hospital defendants unexpectedly delivered a summary judgment motion and sought to have it heard concurrently with the scheduled class action certification motion.

The plaintiffs argued there was insufficient time in the existing timetable to respond.

Applying section 4.1 of the Class Proceedings Act, 1992, the court held it was compelled to order the summary judgment motion to be heard concurrently with the certification motion, as it could dispose of the proceeding in whole or in part.

A further case conference was ordered to revise the timetable.

The plaintiff brought a proposed class action on behalf of over 350,000 Ontario residents whose personal health information was allegedly accessed without authorization from the COVaxON system by an employee of the defendant.

The parties consented to certification for settlement purposes and a $600,000 all-inclusive settlement fund.

Due to the infeasibility of individual distributions, the net settlement funds were to be distributed cy-près to MediaSmarts, a digital literacy charity.

The court certified the class action for settlement purposes, approved the settlement as fair and reasonable, and approved class counsel's fees of 25% of the gross recovery.

The appellant, a former police officer, was investigated for corruption and bribery.

Police obtained a wiretap authorization based on an affidavit that deliberately misdescribed a police agent as a confidential informant.

The appellant was charged criminally based on intercepted communications, but the charges were eventually withdrawn by the Crown due to anticipated Charter breaches regarding the wiretap.

The appellant then sued the investigators and police board for malicious prosecution, negligent investigation, and other civil wrongs.

The trial judge dismissed the action, admitting the wiretap evidence and finding that the police had reasonable and probable grounds to lay the charges.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the wiretap evidence was properly admitted in the civil trial to establish the truth of the grounds for the charges, and that the trial judge made no error in finding that the investigators had both subjective and objective reasonable and probable grounds.