Avery Elizabeth Yandt

The defendant Aedan Helmer, a reporter, brought an anti-SLAPP motion under s. 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act to dismiss an action for invasion of privacy and civil conspiracy brought by Paula Riopelle.

The action stemmed from an article published about criminal charges Riopelle faced.

The court found the article related to a matter of public interest due to the open court principle.

Riopelle failed to demonstrate that her claims had substantial merit or that Helmer had no valid defence, particularly regarding the conspiracy claim (lack of agreement) and privacy claims (publicly available information, no false light, no reckless disregard).

The court also found the public interest in protecting freedom of expression outweighed the public interest in allowing the proceeding to continue.

The motion was granted, and the action against Helmer was dismissed with costs.

This was a costs decision following a six-week civil trial in which the plaintiff's claims for damages, resulting trust, constructive trust, breach of trust, and breach of fiduciary duty were dismissed.

The court held that the plaintiff had advanced serious, fraud-like allegations of theft, conspiracy, elder abuse, and dishonesty without proving them, warranting costs on a substantial indemnity basis.

The court also relied on the defendants' unaccepted Rule 49 offer of $1.5 million, which the plaintiff failed to beat after recovering nothing at trial.

Although impecuniosity was argued, the court found no exceptional sympathetic circumstances justifying a major reduction and ordered costs of $750,000 plus HST and disbursements of $43,959.26 inclusive of HST.

The plaintiff father sued his defendant son and several of the son's companies, seeking the return of over $12 million in funds and properties transferred to the son between 2010 and 2015.

The father alleged that the properties were to be held in trust for him and his other children, and claimed breach of fiduciary duty, undue influence, and unjust enrichment.

The court dismissed the action, finding that the son successfully rebutted the presumption of resulting trust.

The court accepted the son's evidence, corroborated by independent witnesses and bank personnel, that the father had a clear donative intent and gifted the funds and properties to the son.

The plaintiff brought a motion for leave to amend his statement of claim in an action alleging his son misappropriated funds using a power of attorney.

The defendants consented to some amendments, including removing a bank as a defendant, but opposed adding numerous new particulars of properties and transactions.

The court granted the unopposed amendments but denied the opposed ones, finding that adding unproven transactions to the pleading before entitlement to a tracing remedy was established would unnecessarily complicate and delay the trial, constituting an abuse of process.