Flora Yu

The appellant real estate developers sought judicial review of a decision by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) regarding a cost-sharing dispute with an electricity distributor.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application for lack of jurisdiction, finding the OEB had merely provided an opinion and had not exercised a statutory power of decision.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the OEB's interpretation of the Distribution System Code to resolve the parties' complaint constituted a final, binding decision under its exclusive statutory jurisdiction.

As such, the decision was of a sufficiently public character to attract public law remedies, including certiorari, and constituted the exercise of a statutory power of decision under the Judicial Review Procedure Act.

In a certified class action regarding allegedly defective MINI Cooper vehicles, the defendants brought a motion seeking a declaration that the German defendant, BMW-AG, could produce documents using a 'layered approach' to comply with European and German privacy laws (GDPR).

This approach involved initially redacting all personal data.

The plaintiff opposed, arguing that Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure required unredacted production.

The court held that the relevance scrutiny inherent in the Rules of Civil Procedure satisfies the 'Legitimate Interests Exception' under the foreign privacy laws.

The court ordered BMW-AG to produce documents in accordance with a modified Rule 30.03, allowing redactions only for privileged information and personal data that is not relevant to any issue in the action.

The plaintiff in a certified class action brought a refusals motion seeking to compel answers to questions refused during cross-examinations on the defendants' affidavits of documents.

The court dismissed the motion in its entirety, finding that the questions regarding the scope of documentary production, missing documents, and search terms were premature and irrelevant because the parties had not yet settled a discovery plan.

The court held that the scope of documentary discovery must be determined on the pending discovery plan motion before the adequacy of the affidavits of documents could be assessed.