Dr. Jaffe

The appellant, a registered nurse practitioner, appealed a 10-month suspension imposed by the Discipline Committee for failing to maintain professional boundaries by engaging in an intimate relationship with a former patient while continuing to treat the former patient's spouse.

The appellant argued the penalty was unfit and failed to adequately account for the abusive nature of the relationship and her vulnerability.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding the Panel made no error in principle, properly considered the mitigating psychological evidence, and imposed a fit penalty within the reasonable range given the serious impact on both patients.

The applicant father and respondent mother engaged in a high-conflict custody and access dispute over their five-year-old child.

The mother sought sole custody and decision-making, while the father sought expanded access and parallel parenting.

Following a 44-day trial and a section 30 assessment, the court granted the mother sole custody and primary residence, but significantly expanded the father's parenting time to include phased-in overnight visits.

The court ordered a divided parallel parenting regime for decision-making, granting the mother authority over education and routine medical care, and the father authority over routine dental care and final decision-making for major medical and dental issues.

The appellant mother appealed a custody and access order that granted the respondent father generous access to their children, arguing that the father had attempted to kill her during a vacation in Jamaica.

The trial judge had found the mother's allegations not credible, relying heavily on hearsay evidence from a blood expert who testified at the father's Jamaican criminal trial.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that the trial judge erred in admitting the hearsay evidence without threshold reliability, demonstrated a reasonable apprehension of bias through uneven scrutiny of the evidence, and failed to properly assess the best interests of the children, particularly regarding domestic violence.

A new hearing on custody and access was ordered.

The parties separated following a trip to Jamaica in December 2010, during which the applicant alleged the respondent attempted to kill her by slashing her throat, while the respondent alleged the applicant attacked him with a knife.

The respondent was acquitted in a Jamaican criminal trial.

In this family law trial, the court could not determine on a balance of probabilities who attacked whom.

Given the extreme conflict, the court awarded sole custody to the applicant but ordered increasing, unsupervised access for the respondent, culminating in a week-about shared parenting schedule.

The court also addressed child support, found the applicant in contempt for denying telephone access, and ruled that the applicant's family cottage qualified as a matrimonial home.

The appellant appealed his conviction, arguing that the trial judge erred in admitting the evidence of several witnesses, including an expert who testified that the complainant suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, noting that defence counsel at trial had not objected to the evidence and that it was admissible to respond to the defence's attack on the complainant's credibility regarding delayed disclosure.

The court also found the jury charge on credibility to be sufficient.

The applicant, appealing a conviction for second degree murder, brought an application for the disclosure of an affidavit relating to the mental state of the principal Crown witness.

The Crown had put the witness's mental state in issue at trial to support her credibility.

The Court of Appeal found that the information in the affidavit suggested a previous diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder might have been in error, making it necessary for the applicant to make full answer and defence.

The court ordered the disclosure of the affidavit subject to conditions.

The appellant appealed a first degree murder conviction arising from the disappearance of a 14-year-old victim whose body was not found until after conviction.

The court upheld the admission of a jailhouse informant's evidence, finding the informant was not acting as a state agent when the initial inculpatory statements were elicited and therefore there was no breach of the appellant's s. 7 right to silence.

The court also rejected the proposed fresh evidence concerning the later discovery and forensic examination of the remains, holding that it did not materially undermine the informant's evidence or the Crown's theory and would not reasonably have affected the verdict.

The appeal was dismissed.

The appellant appealed convictions for first degree murder and related offences arising from the kidnapping, confinement, sexual assault, and deaths of two teenage victims.

He admitted the predicate offences and argued that another participant alone committed the killings, leaving him guilty only of manslaughter.

The court rejected challenges to the admission of similar fact evidence and expert evidence on battered woman syndrome, found no reversible error in the jury charge on burden of proof, party liability, or credibility, and upheld the jury selection procedure under s. 635(1) of the Criminal Code.

The appeal was dismissed in full.

The appellant challenged the constitutionality of Criminal Code provisions requiring defence counsel to address the jury before the Crown where the defence called evidence.

In a second degree murder appeal involving expert evidence on whether the deceased died by suicide or strangulation, the appellant argued that the order of addresses infringed the rights to make full answer and defence and to a fair trial after the Crown relied on an inference not addressed in the defence closing.

The majority held that ss. 651(3) and (4) do not violate ss. 7 or 11(d) of the Charter because the accused answers the evidence and the Crown’s theory of the case, not the Crown’s final rhetoric, and the order of address is not shown to confer an inherent advantage.

The Court further held that trial judges may cure improper closings through jury instructions and, in the clearest cases of unfairness, may allow a limited reply.