David H. Doherty

The appellant appealed an order of the motions judge regarding a settlement offer.

The Court of Appeal found that the motions judge properly exercised his discretion in concluding there was a reasonable inference that the respondent did not understand the offer remained open and that it had become obsolete.

The appeal was dismissed with no costs.

The moving party brought a motion to set aside a decision of the Chief Justice, which had refused to set aside the Registrar's order dismissing his appeal.

The moving party claimed medical difficulties prevented him from perfecting the appeal over three years.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, finding the medical evidence did not support his contention of being medically unable to perfect the appeal.

The appellant appealed an order dismissing her statement of claim, which challenged a settlement reached before the Grievance Settlement Board.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, agreeing with the motion judge that the matter fell within the jurisdiction of the Grievance Settlement Board, regardless of the fact that the appellant's union would not support her.

The appellants appealed a trial judgment regarding a 1995 trust agreement and a purported 1998 property transfer.

The appellants argued the trial judge misapprehended evidence regarding the mother's capacity to transfer the property.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no basis to interfere with the trial judge's findings of fact, which were supported by powerful evidence from a solicitor and a doctor.

The appellant, a woman of colour, sued her former employer for constructive dismissal, alleging racial discrimination.

The motions judge struck paragraphs of her statement of claim that alleged systemic discrimination against employees of colour, holding that only discriminatory acts directed specifically at the appellant could be pleaded.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding no principled basis to distinguish between direct discrimination and systemic discrimination for the purpose of pleading discriminatory conduct to support a wrongful dismissal claim.

The appellant appealed a charging order made under s. 34(1) of the Solicitors Act in favour of the respondent law firm.

The respondent moved to quash the appeal, arguing the order was interlocutory.

The Court of Appeal held that a charging order finally determines the solicitor's rights and is therefore a final order, dismissing the motion to quash.

On the merits, the Court found no error in the motion judge's application of the conditions for a charging order and dismissed the appeal, awarding costs to the respondent.

The appellants appealed a summary judgment dismissing their claim for life insurance benefits.

The insurer argued that a diagnosis of cancer was made within the 90-day exclusion period.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that while a diagnosis does not need to be communicated to the patient or made by a treating physician to be effective, the policy specifically defined 'cancer (life-threatening)' to exclude some cancers.

Because the doctor's report did not clearly indicate whether the cancer detected met this definition, a triable issue existed.

The summary judgment was set aside.

The police received a 911 call about black men with handguns outside a strip club and set up a roadblock to stop all vehicles leaving the parking lot.

The appellants, who did not match the descriptions provided, were stopped, detained, and searched, leading to the discovery of loaded handguns.

The Court of Appeal held that the roadblock stop was an unconstitutional exercise of ancillary police powers, resulting in arbitrary detention and unreasonable search and seizure.

The handguns were excluded from evidence under s. 24(2) of the Charter due to the seriousness of the breaches and systemic police training failures, and acquittals were entered.

The appellant employer appealed a trial judgment finding that a purported temporary lay-off was in fact a termination of the respondent employee's employment without notice or cause.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's findings, noting they were fully supported by the evidentiary record.

The Court also rejected the appellant's argument regarding an implied term of dismissal without notice, as it was not pleaded or supported by evidence, and affirmed the five-month notice period as reasonable.

The appellant appealed the judgment of the lower court.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the reasons of the lower court judge and dismissed the appeal.

In the circumstances, the court declined to order costs on the appeal.

The young person appealed his conviction and sentence for sexual assault.

The conviction appeal was based on a reasonable apprehension of bias, as the trial judge had accepted a guilty plea from a co-accused six weeks prior to the appellant's trial, during which facts implicating the appellant were read in.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the conviction appeal, finding no reasonable apprehension of bias, noting that trial judges routinely disabuse their minds of potentially prejudicial information from prior proceedings.

The sentence appeal was also dismissed, as the court found no error in the sentence imposed and noted the appellant had almost completed the secure custody portion.

The Ministry of the Attorney General appealed a Divisional Court decision upholding two orders by the Assistant Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The orders required the disclosure of the total amounts of legal fees paid by the Ministry to lawyers acting for intervenors and for Paul Bernardo on his criminal appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the disclosure of the total fee amounts would not reveal any privileged solicitor-client communications.

The Court also held that the disclosure did not constitute an unjustified invasion of personal privacy under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

The appellant appealed a trial judge's decision regarding the capacity of the respondent.

The appellant argued that the experts erred in quantifying the needed capacity and that the fluctuating nature of the respondent's capacity should have shifted the onus of proof.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the experts properly applied the criteria in s. 8 of the Act and that the legal onus remained on the appellant.

The trial judge was entitled to accept the expert evidence presented.

The appellant appealed a decision striking a separate claim for discrimination from their pleadings.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, affirming that discrimination claims do not give rise to a civil cause of action and must be addressed by the Human Rights Commission, though allegations of discrimination may still be pleaded as material facts supporting other causes of action.

The appellant appealed a finding of contempt for breaching a non-compete clause in a court order.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding ample evidence that the appellant had the requisite knowledge of the order or was wilfully blind to it.

Furthermore, the appellant admitted to breaching the clause after being personally served with the contempt motion.

The appeal was dismissed with costs awarded to the respondent.

The Crown appealed a summary conviction appeal court's order requiring it to pay $12,000 in costs to the respondent.

The respondent had successfully avoided a minimum jail sentence for impaired driving after the summary conviction appeal court stayed the sentence, despite finding the minimum penalty provision constitutional.

The summary conviction appeal court awarded costs against the Crown, characterizing the appeal as a test case.

The Court of Appeal allowed the Crown's appeal and set aside the costs order, finding that the appeal was not a test case as the respondent had a vital personal interest in avoiding incarceration, and there was no Crown misconduct to justify the award.

The appellant pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking and possession of prohibited firearms, and was sentenced to two years less a day.

He appealed his sentence, arguing that the sentencing judge made significant errors, including misapprehending the maximum penalty for the drug offence and relying on inaccurate facts.

The Court of Appeal agreed that the sentencing proceedings contained significant errors, warranting a non-deferential review.

However, the Court concluded that the sentence imposed was ultimately fit given the seriousness of the offences, particularly the possession of loaded handguns, balanced against the appellant's youth and rehabilitative potential.

The sentence appeal was dismissed.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario brought a motion for leave to intervene as an added party or, alternatively, as a friend of the court in an appeal concerning certification and costs in an environmental class action.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion to intervene as an added party, noting that interveners are rarely permitted to expand the evidentiary record.

However, the court granted the Commissioner leave to intervene as a friend of the court solely on the issue of costs, finding that the Commissioner could bring a broader public interest perspective to that issue.

The intervention was subject to conditions, including filing a consolidated factum with other interveners.

The prosecutor appealed an order granting certiorari that had quashed a justice of the peace's refusal to permit cross-examination of a chief building inspector on a disclosure motion in a provincial offences prosecution.

The Court of Appeal held that certiorari was not barred by the Provincial Offences Act because the impugned ruling was a pre-trial order not directly appealable under s. 116(1).

However, the refusal to permit cross-examination did not breach natural justice, as the justice of the peace was entitled to control the disclosure process and require the defence to show why cross-examination was necessary.

The defence failed to establish a basis for further disclosure or for compelling cross-examination.

The appeal was allowed, the certiorari order was set aside, the matter was remitted for trial, and no costs were ordered.

The appellants, a secured creditor and an interim receiver, appealed a decision granting priority to carriers over funds collected by a bankrupt freight broker.

The broker had failed to maintain a separate trust account for carriers' charges as required by provincial regulation, instead co-mingled the funds while tracking them in an accounting system.

The Court of Appeal held that provincial statutory deemed trusts do not exclude property from a bankrupt estate unless they satisfy general trust principles, which require strict segregation.

Consequently, the co-mingled funds collected before the receivership lost their trust character and were subject to the secured creditor's interest.

However, the interim receiver was obligated to hold funds collected after its appointment in trust for the carriers.