David L. Corbett

The 92-year-old appellant suffered catastrophic injuries in a motor vehicle accident and sought statutory accident benefits to modify her daughter's home, where she intended to move to receive 24-hour care.

The Licence Appeal Tribunal denied the claim, holding that the appellant first had to prove her existing condominium could not be modified.

On appeal, the Divisional Court found the LAT erred in law by imposing an unlegislated threshold and adopting an unduly narrow interpretation of 'existing home' under section 16 of the SABS.

The appeal was allowed, and the insurer was ordered to pay the claimed benefits immediately.

The appellant landlord appealed and sought judicial review of a Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) decision that dismissed her applications and found she had harassed the respondent tenant and breached the Residential Tenancies Act.

The LTB had ordered the landlord to pay the tenant compensation, cease harassing behaviour, and pay a $1,000 administrative penalty.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal and application for judicial review, finding no errors of law, no procedural unfairness, and that the LTB's factual findings regarding the landlord's retaliatory conduct were well supported by the record.

The applicant owner sought judicial review of an adjudicator's determination ordering it to pay the respondent contractor $685,574.91 under the prompt payment regime of the Construction Act.

The owner argued the adjudicator erred by rejecting its set-off claim for delay, misinterpreting notice holdback obligations, and conducting a procedurally unfair hearing.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding the adjudicator reasonably concluded the contract did not support the delay claim and correctly held that actual notice of registered liens does not trigger notice holdback obligations.

The court also found no procedural unfairness or reasonable apprehension of bias.

The tenant brought a motion for a stay of a Divisional Court case management judge's order pending a panel motion to review that order under s. 21(5) of the Courts of Justice Act.

The tenant had not paid rent in a long time and admitted under oath to being unable to pay rent as it falls due or make payments toward substantial arrears.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for a stay and ordered the statutory stay of the Landlord and Tenant Board eviction order to be lifted immediately, noting that tenants are not entitled to rent-free living at the landlord's expense through the expedient of an appeal.

Costs of $1,000 were awarded to the landlord.

The appellant, a teacher, appealed a penalty decision of the Discipline Committee of the Ontario College of Teachers that revoked her teaching certificate for professional misconduct related to off-duty social media posts.

The appellant argued the penalty ignored her Charter right to freedom of expression.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal, finding that the Discipline Committee committed a fatal error of law by failing to conduct a proper Doré analysis regarding the Charter implications of disciplining the appellant for her speech.

The matter was remitted back for a fresh hearing before a differently constituted panel.

The applicant sought judicial review of a Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decision dismissing his discrimination application for lack of jurisdiction.

The Tribunal had concluded that his transitory ankle injury was not a disability under the Human Rights Code and applied a balance of probabilities standard to its jurisdictional screening.

The Divisional Court granted the application for judicial review, finding that the Tribunal engaged in an impermissible merits review rather than a jurisdictional analysis.

The court held it was unreasonable for the Tribunal to depart from the 'plain and obvious' standard for jurisdictional screening and to fail to apply a multidimensional, socio-political analysis to the definition of disability.

Following dismissal of two civil actions, the defendants sought partial indemnity costs and the self-represented plaintiff opposed the amounts and requested that costs be reserved to the Court of Appeal.

The court rejected reserving costs as contrary to established practice, accepted that costs must remain fair, reasonable, and proportionate, and declined reductions based on self-representation alone.

The court allowed a limited objection for case-management-related costs and declined costs thrown away on a prior adjournment, while otherwise finding the defendants’ summary judgment litigation approach reasonable.

Partial indemnity costs were fixed at $45,000 plus HST for the first action and $2,500 plus HST for the second action, payable within 30 days.

The applicant sought judicial review of decisions by the Ontario Special Education Tribunal (OSET) and the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) regarding his son's special education placement.

The applicant argued his son, who has autism, required 1:1 support in a regular classroom.

The OSET dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, finding that 1:1 support was a 'service' rather than a 'placement.' The HRTO subsequently summarily dismissed the applicant's human rights complaints.

The Divisional Court allowed the applications for judicial review, finding the OSET's narrow interpretation of 'placement' and the HRTO's summary dismissal were both unreasonable.

The HRTO decision was quashed and remitted for a hearing on the merits.

The moving party sought leave to appeal a lower court decision dated July 21, 2025.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and ordered the moving party to pay inclusive costs of $5,000 to the responding party within thirty days.

The moving party brought a motion for leave to appeal a lower court decision.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and ordered the moving party to pay costs of $5,000 to the responding party.

The moving party brought a motion for leave to appeal a lower court decision.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and ordered the moving party to pay costs of $5,000 to the responding party.

The moving party, a student who sued his college over grades, sought an extension of time to seek leave to appeal an order enforcing a $4,000 settlement agreement.

The motion was brought nearly a year after the original decision.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion, finding the delay was unreasonable and unexplained, the proposed appeal lacked merit, and the underlying claim was likely frivolous.

Costs of $3,000 were awarded to the responding parties.

The appellant failed to file materials by the deadline ordered by the case management judge and failed to respond to scheduling emails from court staff.

Neither party appeared at the scheduled hearing.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal as abandoned and made no order as to costs.

The moving party brought a motion for leave to appeal a lower court decision.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and ordered the moving party to pay costs of $5,000 to one of the responding parties.

The appellant and respondent, former common law spouses, co-owned a cottage property.

The respondent sought an order for the sale of the property under the Partition Act.

The application judge ordered the sale, including a term requiring any purchaser to grant a right-of-way to neighbouring property owners, reflecting the original purchase agreement.

The appellant appealed the inclusion of this term and the award of full indemnity costs.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal regarding the sale term, finding no error in the application judge's conclusion that omitting the term would create uncertainty and reduce the sale price.

However, the court allowed the appeal on costs, varying the award from full to substantial indemnity because the application judge erroneously relied on an undertaking that did not apply to the proceeding.

The moving party sought to set aside an interlocutory decision of Papageorgiou J. that declined to schedule appeals of interlocutory decisions made by Associate Justices.

The Divisional Court treated the request as a motion for leave to appeal.

The court denied leave to appeal without costs, noting that the proposed appeals of the Associate Justices' decisions were within the jurisdiction of a single judge of the Superior Court of Justice and had already been disposed of, with no further appeal proceedings available.

The applicants sought judicial review of a decision by the Registrar under the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act, 2002, which refused to fully reimburse their costs for a burial site investigation.

Human remains were discovered on the applicants' property during a Stage 4 archaeological assessment, prompting the Registrar to order a burial site investigation.

The Registrar later found the investigation caused an undue financial burden and agreed to reimburse costs, but limited the reimbursement to a fraction of the claimed amount, attributing the rest to the Stage 4 assessment.

The Divisional Court found the Registrar's decision unreasonable, as it disregarded prior directions that expanded the scope of the burial site investigation and relied on a faulty tool-based analysis to differentiate the work.

The decision was quashed and remitted for reconsideration.

The appellant tenant appealed a Landlord and Tenant Board decision finding she persistently paid rent late and ordering her to pay rent in full and on time for a year.

The tenant argued she paid partial rent on time because she was disputing a rent increase and self-abating.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, holding that under the Residential Tenancies Act, rent means the entire amount due, and any shortfall constitutes late payment.

The Court confirmed that tenants are not permitted to self-abate rent and must pay in full pending LTB adjudication of any abatement claims.

The moving party sought to review a decision dismissing his motion to extend the time to review a prior order, which had denied an extension of time to seek judicial review of a Landlord and Tenant Board eviction decision.

The Divisional Court panel dismissed the review motion, finding that the delay was excessive and prejudicial, and that the underlying proposed proceedings lacked merit because the LTB has no jurisdiction over rent-geared-to-income subsidy decisions.

The court noted that the moving party's recourse regarding his subsidy arrears lies with the municipality's administrative processes, not the LTB.

The appellant pharmacist appealed a Discipline Committee decision finding him guilty of sexually abusing a patient who was also his coworker.

The appellant argued the Committee erred in finding the coworker was a 'patient' under the Patient Criteria Regulation, asserting that dispensing a prescription did not constitute a 'direct interaction'.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, holding that the determination of whether a patient relationship existed was a question of mixed fact and law subject to deference.

The Court found no palpable and overriding error in the Committee's conclusion that dispensing a prescription and conducting a clinical verification constituted a direct interaction creating a pharmacist-patient relationship.