Gilmore

The applicants brought a motion to strike a notice of objection filed by the deceased's former common-law spouse regarding the deceased's will and powers of attorney.

The respondent alleged that the deceased lacked capacity and was unduly influenced by the applicants.

The court found no evidence to support the allegations of incapacity or undue influence.

Furthermore, the respondent was bound by comprehensive minutes of settlement executed prior to the deceased's death, in which she released her rights to his estate.

The court struck the notice of objection as frivolous and vexatious and awarded partial indemnity costs to the applicants.

The applicant wife alleged that her former husband and his family (the third-party respondents) engaged in a complex civil conspiracy to hide his income and assets through corporate restructuring and family trusts, thereby defeating her claims for child and spousal support.

The third-party respondents brought a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the conspiracy claims, while the applicant brought a cross-motion for partial summary judgment.

The husband also brought a motion to retroactively reduce his interim support obligations, arguing his income had materially decreased.

The Superior Court of Justice granted the third-party respondents' motion, dismissing the conspiracy claims, finding that the corporate transactions were undertaken for legitimate tax and estate planning purposes, not to harm the applicant.

The court also granted the husband's motion to vary support, significantly reducing his child and spousal support obligations retroactively to January 1, 2017, based on a material change in his income.

The mother sought sole custody of the parties' two children, alleging severe parental alienation by the father.

The father also sought sole custody.

The court found that the father had engaged in a campaign of denigration against the mother, inappropriately involved the children in adult financial disputes, and empowered the children to disrespect and reject their mother.

The court awarded sole custody to the mother and suspended the father's access pending his completion of the first phase of intensive therapy, finding that the father's alienating behaviour was severely detrimental to the children's best interests.

The accused applied for a stay of proceedings under s. 24(1) of the Charter, alleging he was assaulted by police detectives after his arrest for armed robbery.

The accused claimed the officers beat him in an unmonitored interview room to extract a confession, washed his blood-stained shirt to conceal the assault, and deliberately conducted his videotaped interview with his back to the camera.

The court found the accused's evidence credible and concluded that the officers had indeed assaulted him and attempted to cover it up.

The court held that the police misconduct was so offensive to societal notions of fair play and decency that it fell into the residual category of abuse of process.

The application was granted and the proceedings were stayed.

The plaintiff brought a motion to correct an alleged accidental slip in a trial judgment, to vary the decision based on fraud and fresh evidence, and to stay the execution of costs orders made by the Court of Appeal.

The trial judgment in question had previously been vacated by the Court of Appeal, which dismissed the plaintiff's action and granted the defendant's counterclaim for defamation.

The Superior Court dismissed the motion, finding it lacked jurisdiction to vary a vacated judgment.

In the alternative, the court held that the fresh evidence regarding a non-testifying expert was irrelevant, the accidental slip argument was groundless, and the test for a stay of execution was not met.

The applicant mother brought a motion to change a final order to permit her to move with the parties' four-year-old child from Toronto to Belleville.

The mother sought the move due to the high cost of housing in Toronto and her desire to provide the child with a larger home and his own bedroom.

The respondent father opposed the move, arguing it would negatively impact his access.

The court found a material change in circumstances and determined the move was in the child's best interests, noting the mother's willingness to facilitate access by sharing the driving.

The court also ordered the father to pay arrears for section 7 expenses and imputed his income at $110,000 for child support purposes.

The plaintiff brought a motion for leave under Rule 48.04(1) to bring a subsequent motion to strike a pleading in the defendants' Fresh as Amended Statement of Defence.

The plaintiff argued leave was not required because the action had been struck from the trial list.

The court held that leave was still required and denied the motion, finding no significant or unexpected change in circumstances to justify the delay of over three and a half years since the impugned pleading was delivered.

The applicant, charged with drug trafficking and proceeds of crime offences, brought applications challenging the admissibility of evidence seized during a search of his residence.

He argued that the Step Six procedure under R. v. Garofoli for reviewing redacted search warrant informations violates section 7 of the Charter by denying the right to make full answer and defence.

He also argued that the redacted Information to Obtain (ITO) lacked sufficient detail to justify the warrant, violating his section 8 Charter rights.

The court dismissed both applications, finding that the Step Six procedure provides a fair hearing in context and that the judicial summaries of the confidential informant's information provided sufficient grounds to uphold the warrant.

The applicants challenged the validity of a will and an acknowledgment of trust purportedly executed by the deceased, alleging the signatures were forged.

The respondents, the deceased's parents and brothers, sought to uphold the documents and argued the applicant wife was separated from the deceased and not a dependant spouse.

Relying on expert handwriting evidence, the court found the will and trust documents were forged and therefore invalid.

The court also found that the applicant wife and the deceased were in a spousal relationship at the time of his death, entitling her to be appointed Estate Trustee Without a Will and declaring her and her children dependants of the estate.

The plaintiff brought a motion to withdraw admissions made by her former counsel at a status hearing, which had limited her damages claim to avoid the action being dismissed for delay.

The defendants brought cross-motions to hold the plaintiff to those admissions and strike portions of the statement of claim exceeding them.

The court dismissed the plaintiff's motion and granted the defendants' cross-motions, holding that a client is bound by the representations and admissions made by their counsel in court under the doctrine of ostensible authority.

The plaintiffs brought a medical malpractice action following the death of a 22-year-old man from an aortic dissection six days after he was treated and discharged from an emergency department.

The plaintiffs alleged the emergency physician breached the standard of care by failing to properly review the chart, taking a substandard history, and failing to consider cardiovascular diseases in his differential diagnosis.

The court found that the physician met the standard of care, as the patient's presentation was consistent with a musculoskeletal injury and the likelihood of an aortic dissection in a healthy 22-year-old was exceedingly rare.

The court also found that causation was not proven.

The action was dismissed.

The applicant estate trustee sought to pass the accounts of her late mother's estate.

Two of her sisters objected, alleging that the applicant had improperly managed estate funds and that various inter vivos transfers from the mother to the applicant were loans that needed to be repaid to the estate.

The court applied the presumption of resulting trust and the Locke factors, finding that the transfers were gifts, not loans.

The court passed the accounts and ordered the four sisters to equally share the burden of the estate's unexpected tax liability by repaying a portion of their interim distributions.

The Crown applied during a voir dire to admit crime scene and autopsy photographs of the deceased in a first-degree murder trial.

The accused argued the photographs were gratuitous, inflammatory, and highly prejudicial.

The court found the photographs were highly probative to illustrate the forensic pathologist's opinions, corroborate testimony, and rebut potential defences such as self-defence or a third-party suspect.

The court concluded the probative value outweighed any prejudicial effect and granted the application to admit the photographs.

The Crown applied to admit utterances of the accused made to two civilian witnesses as prior discreditable conduct, and two ante-mortem statements made by the victim to the same witnesses.

The accused is charged with first degree murder.

The court found that the accused's prior threats to kill the victim were relevant to animus, motive, and intent, and their probative value outweighed their prejudicial effect.

The court also ruled that the victim's ante-mortem statements were admissible under the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule and the principled approach, as they were reliable, necessary, and highly probative of the victim's state of mind and the relationship between the parties.

The Crown applied to edit letters written by the accused while in custody awaiting trial for second-degree murder.

The defence argued that without significant editing, the letters would invite prohibited propensity reasoning, while the Crown argued they contained highly probative confessions relevant to identity, motive, and the third-party suspect defence.

The court balanced the probative value against the prejudicial effect, ordering the removal of references to the accused's knowledge of the legal system and inflammatory language, but retaining passages that amounted to confessions or related to the third-party suspect defence.

The accused, charged with first-degree murder, sought to exclude audio and videotaped statements made to police following his arrest.

The court found that a specific utterance made during transport to the police station was obtained in violation of the accused's rights under ss. 10(a) and 10(b) of the Charter, as he had not been given a reasonable opportunity to speak to counsel and was seeking clarity on his charges.

This utterance was excluded under s. 24(2).

However, the court found the subsequent 3.5-hour videotaped statement was voluntary under the Oickle rule and did not violate the accused's s. 7 right to silence, despite his numerous assertions of the right, as police conduct was not oppressive and the accused maintained an operating mind.

The plaintiff municipality brought a motion for an interlocutory mandatory order requiring the defendants to remove a berm constructed on their property adjacent to a municipal road.

The municipality argued the berm caused flooding in the road's drainage ditches, creating safety hazards and potential damage to the pavement structure, and blocked water flow to a provincially significant wetland.

The defendants claimed the flooding was caused by the municipality's own ditch maintenance work.

The court preferred the municipality's expert evidence, finding the berm caused the flooding and was located within the wetland setback in breach of conservation regulations.

The court held that the municipal ditch formed part of the 'highway' under the Municipal Act, 2001, and granted a statutory injunction and an injunction for public nuisance, ordering the defendants to remove the berm.

The plaintiff mortgagee brought a motion to expunge notices registered on title by the defendants and sought costs of an abandoned motion against the defendants and their former solicitor personally.

The court found the defendants had used the court process for tactical purposes and ordered them to pay substantial indemnity costs of $9,663.20, apportioned 70% to the original owner and 30% to the subsequent purchaser.

The court declined to order costs against the solicitor personally, finding he did not orchestrate the scheme.

The court also ordered the notices on title expunged pursuant to the Land Titles Act.

The defendants were involved in a motor vehicle accident while driving a 'loaner' vehicle provided by a dealership while their own vehicle was being repaired.

The defendants' personal insurer and the dealership's garage insurer disputed which policy should respond in priority.

The court found that the loaner vehicle was not a 'leased' vehicle under the Insurance Act, but rather a temporary substitute vehicle.

The court held that the dealership's garage policy was an owner's policy and therefore stood as first loss insurance.

The motion for summary judgment was granted, requiring the garage insurer to defend and indemnify the defendants.