Gabrielle Pop-Lazic

Following the breakdown of a long-term marriage, the respondent spouse sought equalization of property and spousal support.

The only significant asset was the applicant’s pension, but the equalization claim was complicated by limitation issues and the absence of sufficient financial evidence to quantify its effect on support.

The court therefore treated the case primarily as a spousal support claim under s. 15.2 of the Divorce Act.

Considering the lengthy relationship, traditional division of roles, the respondent’s modest income, and the applicant’s pension income, the court ordered retroactive and ongoing spousal support and secured the obligation against the applicant’s property.

The appellant mother appealed a summary judgment order making her infant child a Crown Ward with no access for the purposes of adoption.

The motion judge had relied heavily on a past parenting capacity assessment and historical child protection involvement, while dismissing the mother's new evidence, which included a recent psychological assessment and a plan of care with her new partner.

The Superior Court of Justice allowed the appeal, finding that the motion judge erred in granting summary judgment because the mother had presented sufficient conflicting evidence that required a trial.

The court ordered an expedited trial to determine the child's disposition.

The Children's Aid Society of Toronto brought a motion for summary judgment seeking statutory findings that four children were in need of protection and dispositional orders placing two children with their maternal grandparents and two children with their paternal grandmother, subject to Society supervision and specified access conditions.

The mother opposed the motion and sought to have all children returned to her care.

The court granted the summary judgment motion, finding that the mother had failed to demonstrate a genuine issue for trial.

The court found that the mother had not successfully addressed her lifestyle and parenting challenges, remained incapable of forming therapeutic relationships with professionals, and was unable to prioritize the children's needs over her own.

The court made custody orders under section 57.1 of the Child and Family Services Act placing the children with their grandparents, with access to the parents as agreed by the custodians or as specified by the court.

The applicant brought a motion for interim child and spousal support, production of financial disclosure, and related relief.

The respondent repeatedly failed to comply with prior court orders requiring disclosure of personal and corporate financial records relevant to determining income for support purposes.

Relying on s. 19 of the Federal Child Support Guidelines, the court held that income may be imputed where a payor fails to provide required disclosure or where income may be diverted through a corporation.

Due to incomplete disclosure and evidence of substantial unexplained deposits into personal accounts, the court imputed income to the respondent for interim support purposes.

The court also ordered further production of corporate records, granted leave for questioning, issued a non‑depletion order under the Family Law Act, and awarded substantial indemnity costs.

Following the dismissal of several class actions against automobile insurers, the court determined the issue of costs.

The plaintiffs, who had relied on a previous Court of Appeal decision that was subsequently reversed, sought their costs despite being unsuccessful, citing disastrous financial consequences for their contingency-fee counsel.

The successful insurers sought their costs on a partial indemnity scale.

The Court of Appeal declined to award costs to either side.

The court held that the Class Proceedings Act was not intended to insulate unsuccessful plaintiffs from costs, but also found that the insurers should not receive costs because the litigation constituted a test case and the plaintiffs had reasonably relied on the court's own prior jurisprudence.

Following a successful appeal by the insurer that decertified a class proceeding due to a change in the law, the parties made submissions on costs.

The insurer sought costs of the appeal and the certification motion, while the representative plaintiff and the Class Proceedings Fund argued for no costs.

The Divisional Court declined to award costs to either party for the appeal, the motion for leave to appeal, or the certification motion, finding that the proceeding raised novel issues of law and matters of broad public interest under section 31 of the Class Proceedings Act.

The appellant insurer appealed a decision certifying a class proceeding regarding the application of deductibles to total loss automobile claims.

After the initial certification motion was remitted by the Court of Appeal, a subsequent five-member panel of the Court of Appeal in a different case (Polowin) reversed the interpretation of the relevant statutory condition, finding that insurers could apply deductibles.

The Divisional Court held that putative class members were not privies to the representative plaintiff prior to certification, meaning issue estoppel did not apply.

As the current law established no cause of action, the certification order was set aside.

A freelance author brought a class proceeding alleging copyright infringement arising from newspaper publishers' republication of articles in electronic databases and CD-ROM archives.

The Court held that databases presenting articles as decontextualized individual works did not reproduce the publishers' collective newspaper work and therefore infringed freelance authors' copyrights absent consent, but that the CD-ROM product sufficiently preserved the linkage to daily editions and was a valid reproduction of the newspaper.

The Court further held that only exclusive licences require writing under the Copyright Act, and that staff writers should not have been included in the class because they had no cause of action unless they had exercised their statutory right to restrain publication.

The appeal was dismissed and the cross-appeal allowed only with respect to the CD-ROMs.

The appellants, automobile insurers, appealed the dismissal of their motions to dismiss class proceedings brought by the respondent insureds.

The insureds claimed that the insurers breached statutory condition 6(7) by reducing their actual cash value payments by the policy deductible when taking title to the salvage in total loss claims.

The motion judge, bound by the Court of Appeal's previous decision in McNaughton, dismissed the insurers' motions.

A five-judge panel of the Court of Appeal held that McNaughton was wrongly decided, as statutory condition 6(7) does not quantify the insurer's payment obligation but merely gives the option to acquire salvage.

The Court overruled McNaughton, allowed the appeals, and dismissed the insureds' actions.

The appellant, a freelance author, wrote articles published in The Globe and Mail.

The newspaper subsequently placed these articles in electronic databases (Info Globe Online, CPI.Q, and CD-ROM).

The appellant sued for copyright infringement.

The Court of Appeal held that the databases did not constitute a 'newspaper or similar periodical' and did not reproduce a substantial part of the newspaper's collective work.

The court also found that the oral licence granted by the appellant did not convey a proprietary interest and thus did not need to be in writing.

The appeal and cross-appeal were dismissed.

The plaintiffs in a class action brought motions to quash the defendants' appeals from orders dismissing their Rule 20 and Rule 21 motions.

The plaintiffs argued the orders were interlocutory, not final.

The Court of Appeal held that the orders, which dismissed the motions on a question of law and bound the court to a specific interpretation of the Insurance Act, gave rise to res judicata and were therefore final orders.

The motions to quash were dismissed.

The plaintiff appealed a Divisional Court decision setting aside a motion judge's order that appointed judges and judicial officers as referees to determine individual class members' claims under the Class Proceedings Act.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that a court cannot appoint a judge or judicial officer to conduct a reference under s. 25(1)(b) of the Class Proceedings Act without first obtaining the authorization of the Chief Justice or her designate under s. 14(1) of the Courts of Justice Act.

The consent of individual judicial officers is not an adequate substitute for the Chief Justice's overarching responsibility for judicial assignments.

The appellant sought to certify a class action on behalf of 30,000 residents complaining of noise and physical pollution from a landfill owned by the respondent city.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that while the appellant established an identifiable class and common issues, he failed to demonstrate that a class action was the preferable procedure for resolving the claims.

The Court found that the common issues were negligible compared to the individual issues, and that alternative avenues of redress, such as a Small Claims Trust Fund, were available.

The appeal was dismissed.