Alstair Huw Alstyne Burton

The defendant, Co-operators General Insurance Company, brought a motion for partial summary judgment and security for costs.

The plaintiff, 1923731 Ontario Ltd., had a commercial plaza damaged by fire, and the loss amount was determined by an appraisal process under the Insurance Act.

The plaintiff subsequently sued for additional damages, including those already appraised, and for bad faith.

The court granted partial summary judgment, dismissing the plaintiff's claim for damages already determined by the binding appraisal award, emphasizing that such awards can only be challenged via judicial review.

The court also ordered the plaintiff to post security for costs, finding insufficient assets to cover potential adverse cost awards.

The appellants (Bolenders) appealed a trial judgment that largely prohibited their peat moss extraction, triple mix compilation, and waste receipt activities on their rural-zoned properties, and found breaches of a site alteration by-law.

The trial judge had found these activities were not legal non-conforming uses, except for the open storage of heavy equipment.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, upholding most of the trial judge's orders, including the injunction requiring future compliance with the site alteration by-law.

However, the court set aside one paragraph of the trial order (para. 4) on consent, which had declared a breach of the 2017 by-law, due to lack of evidence of a breach in that specific year.

The court affirmed the trial judge's finding that the activities were not legal non-conforming uses and that the injunction was not retroactive.

A municipality brought an application seeking to restrain landowners and a contractor from removing fill and other materials from agricultural-zoned land and to compel restoration of the grading.

The municipality argued the activity constituted an impermissible extractive use and raised safety concerns related to truck access onto a nearby roadway.

The respondents asserted the work was intended to level the property following the removal of a former railway trestle embankment and disputed the existence of safety risks.

The court found several key factual issues—including zoning implications, the legality of the access, and alleged road safety hazards—could not be resolved on the application record and would require a trial.

As an interim measure, the court restrained excavation activity until a specified date and directed the respondents to apply for a municipal access permit while encouraging negotiations to resolve the dispute.