Christopher Haber

In a class action regarding institutional child abuse at Grenville Christian College, the court addressed the individual issues stage.

The defendants were judgment-proof and had erratic insurance coverage over the 25-year class period, creating a fairness issue where some class members would recover nothing while others would be fully compensated.

The court conditionally approved a three-step Individual Issues Litigation Plan that diverts uninsured claims to a claims program and pools recoveries from insured claims into a Distribution Fund to be shared fairly among all eligible class members.

Following a 22-day parenting trial and a withdrawn motion for contempt, the successful respondent father sought full recovery of his costs totaling $668,930.

The court found the applicant mother's litigation conduct to be unreasonable, including her misuse of a contempt motion and failure to accept a reasonable offer to settle.

The court awarded the respondent costs of $611,637, representing full recovery for the period after his offer to settle and for defending the contempt motion, and a partial recovery for the pre-offer period.

The court declined to order the applicant's counsel to pay the costs personally but granted the applicant leave to bring a motion against her counsel under Rule 24(9).

The applicant mother brought a motion to change a final consent order to terminate the respondent father's parenting time and relocate the child to Montreal.

The father sought sole decision-making and an equal parenting schedule.

The court found the mother had engaged in a pattern of high-conflict litigation, terminated the child's therapy, and failed to act in the child's best interests.

Relying on the 13-year-old child's strong views and preferences, the court granted the father sole decision-making responsibility and took the unusual step of leaving parenting time with the mother entirely to the child's discretion.

The mother's motion was dismissed, and she was ordered to pay child support.

The plaintiffs, former boarding students of Grenville Christian College, brought a class action against the school and the estates of its former headmasters for systemic negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.

The court found that the school operated as a 'total institution' and employed abusive, arbitrary, and humiliating disciplinary practices, including excessive corporal punishment and public shaming, which fell below the standard of care for educational institutions in Ontario.

The court concluded that the defendants breached their duty of care and fiduciary obligations to the students, and that their conduct merited an award of punitive damages.