Ella Jane Benedetti

The Supreme Court of Canada considered whether to recognize a new tort of intimate partner violence in the context of family law proceedings.

The appellant wife had suffered a 16-year pattern of physical, psychological, and financial abuse by her husband.

The majority of the Court recognized the new tort of intimate partner violence, focusing on the harm of coercive control and the deprivation of autonomy, dignity, and equality.

The Court allowed the appeal in part, modifying the trial judge's damages award to fall entirely under general compensatory damages for the new tort.

The dissenting judges argued that existing torts were sufficient to compensate the wife and that recognizing a new tort was unnecessary and procedurally inappropriate in this case.

Following a trial where the applicant was awarded $3 million in lump-sum spousal support, the court determined the applicant's entitlement to prejudgment interest and costs.

The court awarded $129,698 in prejudgment interest, finding no reason to exercise its discretion to disallow it.

The court also awarded the applicant $670,000 in costs, noting she was entirely successful on the primary issue of spousal support and had made a qualifying offer to settle that entitled her to full recovery of costs from the date of the offer.

The applicant sought spousal support, unjust enrichment relief, and a mutual no-contact order arising from a disputed common-law relationship with an extremely wealthy respondent.

The court found the parties cohabited in a conjugal relationship from January 1, 2019 to August 23, 2023, applying the Molodowich factors holistically and relying heavily on contemporaneous records, caregiving evidence, and surreptitious recordings admitted for their high probative value.

The applicant failed to establish compensatory entitlement, but succeeded on a non-compensatory basis because of the enormous income disparity, her disability, and the steep post-separation drop from a highly luxurious standard of living.

The court imputed support income to the respondent using investible assets, fixed support at approximately $200,000 monthly for three years, and converted that award into a $3,000,000 lump sum.

The unjust enrichment claim and request for a restraining order were dismissed.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario granted a motion to quash an appeal in a family law matter concerning a motion for a sealing order and publication ban to protect a child’s privacy.

The court held that the order under appeal was interlocutory, not final, and thus any appeal lay to the Divisional Court with leave, not to the Court of Appeal.

The decision reviews the distinction between interlocutory and final orders, emphasizing that privacy and sealing orders are generally collateral to the main issues in family law proceedings and do not determine substantive rights.

The court also declined to reconstitute itself as the Divisional Court.