Daria Peregoudova

The plaintiff in a wrongful dismissal action brought a motion to exclude emails between himself and his lawyer from the defendant's affidavit of documents.

The emails were sent using the plaintiff's corporate email account.

The court found that the plaintiff, who was the founder and former CEO of the company, had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his corporate email account, as he had used it for personal matters for over 20 years without a written policy prohibiting such use.

The court held that the emails were protected by solicitor-client privilege and ordered their removal from the affidavit of documents.

The applicant union sought judicial review of an arbitration award finding the arbitrator lacked jurisdiction to order termination and severance pay against a related company and corporate directors following the employer's bankruptcy.

The Divisional Court applied the reasonableness standard of review.

The Court upheld the arbitrator's conclusion that he lacked jurisdiction to make orders against entities and individuals who were not parties to the collective agreement, noting that the related company was not a party and the Business Corporations Act requires a civil action to hold directors liable.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.

The appellants, Dairy Farmers of Ontario and Dairy Farmers of Canada, appealed a Master's order dismissing their motion to intervene as added parties in an application challenging the constitutionality of mandatory milk pasteurization laws.

The Master had dismissed the motion based on the Supreme Court's decision in Northwestern, finding that allowing the appellants to intervene would violate their impartiality as administrative bodies.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal, holding that the Master erred in applying Northwestern, as the underlying application was a constitutional challenge to a statute, not a judicial review of the appellants' own decisions.

The Court found the appellants met the criteria under Rule 13.01 and could make a useful contribution given their specialized expertise.

Constitutional appeal concerning whether a provincial liquor-control provision limiting possession of non-provincially sourced alcohol violated s. 121 of the Constitution Act, 1867.

The Court held that s. 121 bars laws that in essence and primary purpose restrict interprovincial trade like tariffs, but does not invalidate laws whose trade impacts are incidental to broader regulatory objectives.

It also held that lower courts cannot depart from binding precedent absent genuinely transformative legal developments or new social and legislative facts.

Applying that framework, the impugned provision's main purpose was provincial control of liquor distribution and use, not trade restriction.

The appeal was allowed and the provision was upheld.