Arthur L. Hamilton

The appellant school boards appealed an arbitral award that dismissed their claim for a proportionate share of the respondent insurance exchange's Guarantee Fund upon terminating their memberships.

The court upheld the arbitrator's interpretation of the Reciprocal Agreement, finding that section 7 clearly extinguished a departing subscriber's rights to the fund.

The court also rejected the argument that an implied trust existed outside the contract.

The appeal was dismissed with costs awarded to the respondent.

The appellants appealed a decision.

At the hearing, an alleged conflict was raised.

The Divisional Court was unable to ascertain the facts respecting the alleged conflict on the record.

As a result, the appeal was adjourned to be heard on a later date with a newly constituted panel due to scheduling exigencies.

The defendants appealed a Master's decision that permitted the plaintiffs to amend their statement of claim to include extra-contractual misrepresentation claims despite an entire agreement clause, and refused the defendants' amendments pleading similar fact evidence of the plaintiffs' aggressive litigation history.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding the Master correctly struck the similar fact pleadings as they did not constitute an affirmative defence of abuse of process.

The court also upheld the Master's decision to allow the plaintiffs' extra-contractual claims to proceed through the pleadings stage, noting that under the Tercon principle, such claims are not necessarily doomed to failure.

The Master's deferral of discovery planning was upheld as a reasonable exercise of discretion.

The appellants, members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, sought a declaration that the party could not merge with the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance Party without the unanimous consent of all its members.

The application judge dismissed the application, finding that the Canada Elections Act governed the merger.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision, ruling that the common law requirement for unanimous consent in voluntary associations does not apply to registered political parties, which are governed by a sophisticated statutory regime.

Furthermore, the Canada Elections Act explicitly outlines the requirements for a merger, which do not include unanimous consent.