Christopher A. Wayland

In a proposed class action regarding youth detention centres, the plaintiff sued the Crown for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and Charter violations, explicitly limiting the claim to the Crown's several liability.

The Crown issued third party claims against the NGOs that operated some of the centres.

The plaintiff and the NGOs moved to strike the third party claims.

The court granted the motions, applying the principle that where a plaintiff limits their claim to the defendant's proportionate degree of fault, a third party claim for contribution and indemnity is legally untenable.

In a proposed class action regarding the use of secure isolation in youth detention centres, the Crown brought a motion seeking production of the representative plaintiff's Youth Records.

The plaintiff opposed, arguing the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction to order production under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

The court held that while it could not directly order production of the records, it had jurisdiction under the Class Proceedings Act to order the plaintiff to apply to the Youth Justice Court for access to the records.

The court ordered the plaintiff to make the application, failing which the proposed class action would be stayed.

This motion concerned the certification of a class proceeding against the provincial Crown for alleged physical, emotional, and sexual abuse perpetrated against students at three residential schools for the deaf.

The action pleaded claims in negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, as well as Family Law Act derivative claims.

The motion for certification was brought on consent and was granted, as all criteria under the Class Proceedings Act, 1992 were satisfied.

The accused brought a procedural motion within a Rowbotham application seeking permission to file his Legal Aid Ontario file with the court without disclosing it to the Crown.

He argued the file contained presumptively privileged information and disclosure could prejudice trial fairness given the fraud-related charges.

The Crown agreed that privileged portions could be redacted and undertook not to use fresh disclosure from the file at trial.

The court held that relevant non-privileged information from the Legal Aid file may be necessary to assess a Rowbotham application and that the adversarial process requires disclosure to permit cross‑examination and submissions.

Given the availability of redactions and the Crown’s undertaking, the court found the risk of prejudice minimal and rejected the request to file the materials ex parte.