David M. Paciocco

The appellant, who was previously found not criminally responsible, appealed a Review Board disposition ordering his continued detention at a secure forensic psychiatric unit.

The appellant argued that he no longer posed a significant threat to public safety and that the detention order was not the least onerous disposition.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the Board's decision was reasonable and supported by evidence from a psychological risk assessment and the treating psychiatrist, which indicated a continued moderate-to-high risk of violent recidivism and a need for a gradual transition into the community.

The appellant developer sued the respondent resident for defamation, economic torts, and trespass after the respondent publicly opposed a mall redevelopment and complained to the city about safety and bylaw issues.

The respondent successfully moved to dismiss the action as a SLAPP under s. 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act, and was awarded $25,000 in damages and full indemnity costs.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal and damages award, finding the action was inextricably linked to the respondent's public expression and lacked substantial merit.

However, the Court granted leave to appeal costs, finding the motion judge erred by pre-determining the costs scale, and reduced the costs award from $156,394.54 to $75,000.

The appellant, who was previously found not criminally responsible for attempted murder, appealed a detention order made by the Ontario Review Board.

She argued the Board failed to adequately consider her proposal for a conditional discharge that included a 'Young clause' and treatment compliance conditions.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that the Board must meaningfully consider whether the proposed conditions could practically and effectively address the risk to the public, and remitted the matter for a new hearing.

The appellant pleaded guilty to 23 charges, including multiple frauds and breaches of court orders, and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal found the sentencing judge committed a material error of principle by including a withdrawn charge in the sentencing analysis.

The global sentence was reduced to three and a half years.

Additionally, two restitution orders were vacated because the victims had recovered their losses, and the remaining restitution orders were varied to allow 10 years to pay.

The appellant challenged an indeterminate sentence imposed after a dangerous offender designation, arguing that his risk could be managed in the community through a fixed custodial term followed by a ten-year long-term supervision order.

The court held that the sentencing judge made no error in finding that the appellant’s violent risk was driven by multiple factors, including personality pathology not meaningfully amenable to medication.

The psychiatric evidence established high risk, chronic non-compliance with treatment and supervision, and an absence of insight or motivation to change.

The court concluded that the conditions necessary to control the risk could only be achieved in custody and dismissed the appeal.

The appellant appealed a sexual assault conviction on the sole ground that the trial judge's exchanges with defence counsel created a reasonable apprehension of bias.

The court applied the established bias test and emphasized the strong presumption of judicial impartiality and the heavy burden required to rebut it.

Although the trial judge's comments to defence counsel were found to be inappropriate and short-tempered, they arose in the context of counsel's repeated improper questioning, including myth-based reasoning and impermissible use of prior sexual history evidence.

Viewed realistically and practically, the exchanges did not demonstrate that the trial judge was predisposed to one side.

The appeal was dismissed.

Zurich appealed a Superior Court decision that held Zurich and Chubb equally responsible for paying statutory accident benefits to a claimant injured in a rental vehicle.

The claimant initially applied to Chubb, who denied the claim and failed to notify Zurich within 90 days as required by O. Reg. 283/95.

The second arbitrator found Chubb solely responsible for the benefits due to its breaches of sections 2 and 3 of the Regulation.

The appeal judge overturned this, finding the insurers should share responsibility.

The Court of Appeal allowed Zurich's appeal and reinstated the arbitrator's award, holding that the appeal judge erred in treating the insurers as having equal priority under section 268 of the Insurance Act.

The arbitrator reasonably exercised his discretion in requiring Chubb to pay the benefits permanently as a consequence of its breaches.

The parties jointly purchased a residential property as tenants in common.

After their relationship ended, the application judge granted an equitable vesting order transferring the appellant's one percent interest to the respondent and ordered compensation.

The appellant appealed the vesting order and compensation.

The respondent registered the vesting order on title before the appeal was heard.

The Court of Appeal held that the appeal of the vesting order was moot due to the registration on title and declined to exercise its discretion to hear it.

The court also dismissed the appeal regarding compensation and denied leave to appeal costs.

The appellant made a complaint to Serbian Orthodox Church authorities about the respondent, a priest, regarding his involvement in her family law proceedings.

The respondent sued for defamation, and the appellant brought an anti-SLAPP motion under s. 137.1 of the Courts of Justice Act.

The motion judge dismissed the motion, finding the expression did not relate to a matter of public interest because it was a private grievance not widely disseminated.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the motion judge erred by focusing on the size of the audience rather than the content of the expression, which raised broader concerns about the propriety of priests participating in private litigation.

The matter was remitted to the Superior Court for a full s. 137.1 analysis.

The appellant, a medical doctor, appealed his convictions for 16 counts of sexual assault and 1 count of sexual exploitation against 13 patients.

The appeal centered on the trial judge's universal ruling permitting the cross-count use of similar fact evidence.

The appellant argued the trial judge erred in assessing the risk of prejudice, using acquitted counts as similar fact evidence, finding sufficient similarity, and discounting the risk of inadvertent tainting from media and the CPSO website.

The majority of the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no reversible error in the trial judge's treatment of the similar fact evidence or the risk of tainting.

The dissenting judge would have allowed the appeal in part, finding the trial judge erred in her assessment of inadvertent tainting for two counts.

The appellant, a young Indigenous man, pleaded guilty to four counts of dangerous driving causing death and was convicted after trial of related drug-driving counts under s. 320.14(3) of the Criminal Code for operating a conveyance while his blood THC concentration was eight times the 5 ng/mL legal limit, causing the deaths of four persons during a high-speed police pursuit.

He appealed conviction, arguing the THC limit was arbitrary and overbroad under s. 7 of the Charter, and appealed his 17-year global sentence as demonstrably unfit.

The Court of Appeal dismissed both appeals, holding the THC limit is neither arbitrary nor overbroad: it is rationally connected to Parliament's dual objectives of deterrence and enhanced detection, functions as a reasonable proxy analogous to the blood alcohol regime, and the overbreadth threshold was not met by the narrow class of frequent and chronic users who may exceed the limit after impairment subsides.

On sentence, the court found no error in principle and upheld the 17-year term as justified by an exceptional constellation of aggravating factors including four deaths, two separate high-speed police pursuits, a record of 15 prior driving convictions, and a highly elevated degree of subjective fault, offset but not outweighed by Gladue considerations, youth, remorse, and guilty pleas.

The appellants, a real estate developer and related corporate entities, appealed a judgment granting the respondent lender $12.9 million plus interest on a defaulted commercial loan.

The appellants argued the application judge erred by failing to convert the application to an action, by conducting a credibility analysis on a paper record, and by foreclosing a defence of equitable set-off and counterclaim.

The Court of Appeal found the application judge's reasons were clear and sufficient, the documentary record amply supported the finding that no binding second amending agreement was ever reached, and credibility assessments were not necessary given the strength of the documentary evidence.

The court declined to resolve whether the enhanced fact-finding powers available under r. 20 apply to applications under r. 14, leaving that question for another day.

The appeal was dismissed and full indemnity costs of $55,000 were awarded to the respondent pursuant to the contractual costs clause in the loan agreement.

The appellants appealed an order requiring them to post $66,670 as security for costs pending the trial of their counterclaim.

The Court of Appeal raised the issue of jurisdiction, noting that orders for security for costs are interlocutory, not final.

The appellants argued the order was final in substance because they could not afford to pay it, which would end the litigation.

The Court of Appeal rejected this argument, holding that the legal nature of the order, not its practical effect, determines whether it is interlocutory or final.

The appeal was quashed for want of jurisdiction.

The moving party brought a motion to quash the insurers' appeal of an order denying them leave to amend their pleadings to add the defence of civil fraud.

The moving party argued the order was interlocutory and should be appealed to the Divisional Court.

The Court of Appeal held that an order refusing leave to amend a pleading to advance a new substantive defence is a final order.

Because the order foreclosed the insurers' ability to assert the distinct defence of civil fraud, the appeal properly lies to the Court of Appeal.

The motion to quash was denied.

The appellant appealed an order denying her motion to set aside a default judgment obtained by the respondent after the appellant defaulted on her mortgage.

The motion judge found that while the appellant moved with reasonable dispatch, she failed to provide a draft statement of defence and her proposed defences lacked an air of reality.

The Court of Appeal found no error in the motion judge's articulation or application of the test for setting aside a default judgment and dismissed the appeal.

The appellant railway company appealed a partial summary judgment dismissing its claims for ongoing coal tar contamination as an abuse of process.

The appellant had previously commenced an action in 1989 for historical and continuing coal tar migration, which was dismissed for inordinate delay and failure to preserve evidence.

The appellant commenced a new action in 2014 claiming damages for continuing migration since 2012.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the continuing tort claims were exhausted by the dismissal of the 1989 action, and allowing the 2014 action to proceed would undermine finality and bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

The appellant appealed a scheduling order made by the Superior Court of Justice.

The Court of Appeal quashed the appeal, holding that a scheduling order is an interlocutory order because it does not determine the merits of the dispute.

Therefore, the appeal should have been brought to the Divisional Court, and the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction.

No costs were awarded.

The appellant appealed a conviction for dangerous operation of a conveyance causing bodily harm arising from a collision with an electric scooter rider on a residential street.

He argued that the trial judge misapprehended the evidence concerning his emotional state, improperly relied on demeanour evidence, and erred in rejecting his position that the incident reflected only a momentary lapse of attention.

The court held that the characterization of the appellant's emotional condition was supported by the record, that any demeanour-based inference was invited by defence counsel, and that the trial judge committed no reversible error in treating the conduct as a marked departure from the reasonable standard of care.

The conviction appeal was dismissed, and the sentence appeal was dismissed as abandoned.

The Crown appealed a stay of proceedings entered under s. 24(1) of the Charter for a violation of the accused's s. 11(b) right to be tried within a reasonable time.

The application judge had found the net delay exceeded the 30-month presumptive ceiling.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal held that the application judge erred in her treatment of a discrete exceptional circumstance arising from the release of a Supreme Court of Canada decision that necessitated a rehearing of a change of venue motion.

The Court found the Crown had taken reasonable steps to mitigate the resulting delay and deducted an additional 93 days.

This brought the net delay below the presumptive ceiling.

The appeal was allowed and the stay of proceedings was set aside.

The appellant pleaded guilty to importing 1.5 metric tonnes of cocaine and possessing it for the purpose of trafficking, receiving a 16.5-year sentence.

On appeal, he argued the sentencing judge erred by anchoring his sentence to the 19-year sentence imposed on the scheme's organizer pursuant to a joint submission.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding the sentencing judge erred in principle by using the co-accused's sentence as a starting point and failing to adequately account for the appellant's subordinate role, lack of prior record, and cognitive limitations.

The sentence was reduced to 12 years' imprisonment.