David Sydney Steinberg

The appellants appealed a judgment declaring the respondent the beneficial owner of 15% of a corporation's shares and finding their conduct oppressive under the OBCA.

The appellants narrowed their appeal to challenge only the order requiring production of financial statements dating back to 2014.

The Court of Appeal held that the production order was ancillary to the respondent's damages claim, not a standalone shareholder rights claim subject to a limitation period, and that compliance required only producing existing documents.

The appeal was dismissed with costs of $30,000.

The Ontario Land Tribunal held a Case Management Conference regarding appeals of a Municipal Order to Pay Costs issued by the Regional Municipality of Peel.

The order relates to spills from underground storage tanks at a gas station.

The appellants requested a motion to stay the proceedings pending the resolution of a related civil matter in the Ontario Superior Court.

The Tribunal scheduled a one-day motion hearing for October 10, 2025, and a second Case Management Conference for December 8, 2025.

The defendants brought a Charter application to exclude evidence (money and a handgun) obtained during a police interaction, alleging multiple Charter breaches related to arbitrary detention, unlawful search and seizure, and denial of the right to counsel.

The court found no arbitrary detention at the initial stages of the police interaction and determined that the subsequent search and seizure were lawful, based on reasonable grounds of Liquor License Act and Cannabis Control Act violations.

While minor breaches of the right to counsel (failure to "hold off" questioning post-arrest) and a failure to report seized items to a justice were identified, the court concluded that admitting the evidence would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute, considering the seriousness of the conduct, the minimal impact on the defendants' rights, and society's strong interest in the adjudication of serious charges on their merits.

The application to exclude evidence was dismissed.

The appellant appealed a summary judgment recognizing and enforcing a US$1.6 million New York judgment.

The sole issue on appeal was whether the Ontario enforcement action was statute-barred.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding that the appellant had not raised its limitation period argument before the motion judge and had previously agreed that the limitation period began when the New York appeal was dismissed, in accordance with established precedent.

The court declined to reconsider its prior jurisprudence on when the limitation period for enforcing foreign judgments commences.

The Blankenstein and Fialkov families, joint owners of a 168-unit apartment building through corporate entities, sought to separate their interests due to an irreconcilable breakdown in their relationship, exacerbated by an internal dispute within the Fialkov family.

The Blankensteins applied for a winding-up of Godstone Limited and a court-ordered buy-out of the Fialkovs' 50% interest at fair market value.

The primary contentious issue was the valuation date for the buy-out, with the Blankensteins seeking a current date (January 2023 or later) to reflect a market downturn, and the Fialkovs advocating for March 2022 (the market peak).

The court found that a buy-out was appropriate under s. 207 of the OBCA and determined the fairest valuation date to be November 3, 2022, the date of the application hearing, balancing the parties' expectations and the market fluctuations.

The court also addressed the applicants' alternative request for a public sale, finding it unnecessary given the buy-out order.

In this omnibus Charter application arising from a human trafficking and sexual assault prosecution, the applicants challenged multiple search warrants, production orders, arrests, detentions, right to counsel breaches, delayed bail appearances, alleged racial bias, negligent investigation, and disclosure failures.

The court found several serious Charter breaches, including invalid judicial authorizations relating to one dwelling, one phone, and one production order, unreasonable manner of search at one residence, multiple right to counsel breaches, and unlawful delay in bringing two accused before a justice.

A stay of proceedings was granted to one applicant because cumulative and partly systemic misconduct would further prejudice the integrity of the justice system if the prosecution continued.

Another applicant obtained exclusion of his police statement and cellphone evidence under s. 24(2), while the remaining applications for a stay were dismissed.

The three accused were charged with various offences related to the human trafficking and sexual exploitation of an 18-year-old complainant.

The Crown alleged that one accused recruited the complainant into the sex trade, acted as her pimp, and exploited her while she suffered from a severe cocaine addiction.

The other two accused were alleged to have participated in her exploitation, sexual assault, and procuring.

The court carefully assessed the complainant's credibility, noting her memory was affected by trauma and heavy drug use, but found her core allegations against the primary accused were corroborated by digital evidence and the recovery of firearms she disposed of on his behalf.

The primary accused was found guilty of human trafficking, procuring, receiving material benefits, advertising sexual services, unauthorized possession of a firearm, and uttering threats.

The second accused was found guilty only of receiving a material benefit from sexual services (selling her cocaine), and acquitted of the other charges due to reasonable doubt.

The third accused was acquitted of all charges due to the unreliability of the complainant's evidence against him.

A defence application for a stay of proceedings based on lost police cruiser video and unrecorded interviews was dismissed.

The applicants, Patrick Agpoon and Shea Flemmings, sought a stay of proceedings due to an alleged breach of their s. 11(b) Charter right to be tried within a reasonable time.

The court applied the R. v. Jordan framework, calculating total delay, deducting defence-caused delay, and assessing the impact of the global pandemic as an exceptional circumstance.

While significant defence delays were attributed to both applicants, the Crown failed to adequately explain a 12-month delay in preferring a direct indictment, particularly given its earlier contemplation of this route and its successful use in a similar case during the pandemic.

The court found that even after reasonable adjustments for defence delay and a limited period for the pandemic, the net delay for both applicants exceeded the 30-month Jordan ceiling for superior courts.

Consequently, the court found an infringement of their s. 11(b) rights and stayed the charges.

The appellants appealed the motion judge’s dismissal of two actions and an application via summary judgment.

The motion judge had found the proceedings to be an abuse of process, that the claims had been previously released, and that they were barred by statutory limitation periods.

The Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge's decision, finding no errors in his assessment that there was no evidence of fraud tainting prior settlements or releases, and that the claims were indeed barred by abuse of process, releases, and limitation periods.

The court affirmed that summary judgment was an appropriate tool for addressing these threshold issues.

The defendant brought a motion under Rule 57.07 seeking an order that the plaintiffs' former lawyer personally pay the costs he incurred in defending the action.

The action had previously been settled and dismissed without costs on consent.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the issue of costs was res judicata due to the consent dismissal order.

Furthermore, the court held that even if the motion was not barred, the evidence did not meet the high threshold required to award costs against a lawyer personally.

The moving parties (Sprott Parties) sought to stay the responding parties' (Penfound Parties) claims as an abuse of process after discovering the responding parties had unauthorized access to and reviewed privileged emails and documents belonging to the moving parties.

The court found that the responding parties obtained access to confidential and privileged information and failed to rebut the presumption of prejudice.

Concluding that allowing the action to proceed would be manifestly unfair and bring the administration of justice into disrepute, the court permanently stayed the responding parties' claims.

The accused was charged with sexual services offences and uttering threats.

After the Crown withdrew a sexual assault charge, the accused argued that the rape shield provisions under s. 276 of the Criminal Code no longer applied to his proposed cross-examination of the complainant regarding her prior sex trade work.

The Crown and the complainant argued that s. 276 or the common law Seaboyer regime should apply.

The court held that s. 276 does not apply to sexual services offences unless there is a connection to a listed offence, which was absent here.

The court also declined to extend the Seaboyer common law regime, ruling that the trial judge is best suited to exercise a gatekeeping role over the proposed cross-examination.

Following the dismissal of three related proceedings as an abuse of process, the successful defendants sought costs.

The court found that the plaintiffs' unfounded allegations of fraud and intentional wrongdoing, combined with their attempt to relitigate matters barred by prior releases, justified an elevated costs award.

The court awarded costs on a substantial indemnity basis, fixing the total amount at $227,532.72, apportioned among the plaintiffs and the various defendants to ensure proportionality and reasonableness.

The defendants brought motions for summary judgment to dismiss three proceedings commenced by the plaintiffs regarding a long-standing family business dispute.

The plaintiffs alleged fraud, conspiracy, and misappropriation of funds dating back to the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The court granted the motions, finding that the actions were an abuse of process as they attempted to relitigate issues that had been resolved in prior litigation and settlements.

The court also held that the claims were barred by broad releases signed by the plaintiffs in 2005, 2012, and 2015, and were statute-barred under the Limitations Act, 2002 and the Trustee Act.

The offender was convicted of second-degree murder for the brutal beating of an 82-year-old woman during a home invasion.

The Crown sought 18 years of parole ineligibility, while the defence sought the minimum 10 years, citing the offender's Aboriginal background, mental illness, and the jury's recommendation.

The court found the offender posed a significant danger and set the base parole ineligibility at 18 years.

However, the court found that the 27 months the offender spent in administrative segregation constituted a gross violation of his s. 12 Charter rights against cruel and unusual treatment.

As a remedy, the court reduced the parole ineligibility period by 27 months, resulting in a final period of 15 years and 9 months.

The moving parties sought pre-discovery disclosure of the responding parties' personal and corporate tax returns, notices of assessment, and bank statements from 2002 to 2019.

The underlying litigation involves a real estate development dispute where the moving parties allege the responding parties improperly used mortgage proceeds for personal expenses.

The court found the requested documents were relevant to tracing funds and testing the responding parties' assertions about their contributions to the property.

The court ordered the production of the tax returns and bank statements, but limited the temporal scope to the period between 2002 and 2016, when the property was sold.

The applicant sought bail on charges of Break, Enter & Theft, Robbery, and Take Auto without Consent while subject to an undertaking on prior charges.

The applicant had a lengthy criminal record spanning over 20 years, including multiple convictions for violent offences, weapons offences, driving-related offences, and failures to comply with court orders.

The applicant had previously failed to appear in court and escaped lawful custody.

The court considered the secondary and tertiary grounds for detention and the proposed release plan involving two sureties, house arrest, and GPS monitoring.

The court granted bail with strict conditions.

The accused, charged with first-degree murder, brought a pre-trial motion seeking a ruling that the recent amendments to the Criminal Code under Bill C-75 eliminating peremptory challenges operated retrospectively.

The accused argued that the right to challenge jurors is a substantive right.

The court dismissed the application, finding that the right to a jury trial is substantive, but the right to peremptorily challenge jurors is procedural.

Following recent jurisprudence, the court held that the elimination of peremptory challenges does not breach the right to a fair trial and applies prospectively to the accused's jury selection.

The accused was charged with first-degree murder following a home invasion where an 82-year-old woman was beaten to death.

At the close of the Crown's case, the defence moved for a directed verdict of acquittal on first-degree murder, arguing the jury should only be left with second-degree murder or manslaughter.

The Crown argued first-degree murder could be established through planning and deliberation or constructive murder based on forcible confinement.

The court granted the directed verdict application, finding no evidence to support planning and deliberation, nor evidence of a discrete act of forcible confinement separate from the killing itself.

The jury was directed to return a verdict of acquittal on first-degree murder and subsequently convicted the accused of second-degree murder.

The Crown brought an application to admit a video statement made by the accused to police following his arrest for second-degree murder.

The accused argued the statement was involuntary, alleging his will was overborne by persistent questioning, inducements, and delayed cautions.

The court found the Crown proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement was voluntary, noting the police did not offer inducements, the questioning was not oppressive, and the accused understood his rights.

The statement was ruled admissible subject to editing out specific prejudicial references.