Jacqueline Rebecca Chan

The plaintiff claimed a commission of $8,080,000 from the defendants, alleging it introduced them to a mining company and provided confidential information pursuant to a confidentiality agreement.

The defendants moved for summary judgment to dismiss the claim.

The court found that the defendants and the mining company had already introduced themselves before the plaintiff's involvement, and the plaintiff only provided publicly available information.

The motion for summary judgment was granted, the action was dismissed against the moving defendants, and substantial indemnity costs were awarded to the defendants.

This is a costs endorsement from the Court of Appeal for Ontario, following an appeal where the lower court's judgment and costs order were set aside and the application remitted for rehearing.

The parties were unable to agree on the disposition of the original application costs.

The Court of Appeal determined that the fairest approach was to leave the issue of the application costs to the trier of fact on the rehearing, whether before a Superior Court judge or in an arbitral process.

Appeal costs had previously been awarded to the appellants.

This is an appeal concerning the interpretation of a complex project agreement for the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The application judge had found that a specific contractual provision (s. 62.1(c)) requiring a "Variation Enquiry" was triggered by an internal email from the Crown agencies to their own staff, which was never sent to the consortium.

The Court of Appeal found that the application judge made a palpable and overriding error in concluding that this internal email constituted notification to the consortium.

The appeal was allowed, the original judgment set aside, and the application remitted to the Superior Court for a rehearing to consider other arguments, including good faith and the indivisibility of the Crown, which the application judge had not addressed.

In the context of complex estate litigation, the applicant sought to withdraw two affidavits previously filed in support of a motion for the appointment of an Estate Trustee During Litigation and for documentary production.

The applicant argued the affidavits were no longer necessary due to a subsequent consent order that streamlined the proceedings and provided for documentary discovery.

The respondent opposed the withdrawal, arguing it was a tactic to shield the affiants from cross-examination.

The court held that leave is required to withdraw an affidavit filed in support of a motion.

Applying the Gill factors, the court granted leave, finding that the affidavits had not yet been used by the court, the respondents would not be prejudiced, and the withdrawal was a legitimate response to the evolving litigation landscape rather than an improper tactic to avoid cross-examination.

The moving parties sought leave to appeal an order dismissing their motion for a stay of proceedings.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and awarded costs of $10,000 to the responding parties.

The applicants sought $430,000 in costs following a successful application regarding a construction dispute.

The respondents argued that a settlement offer they made should limit the applicants' costs to the period before the offer, and that disbursements for online legal research should not be compensable.

The court found that the respondents' non-monetary settlement offer was more favourable than the judgment obtained by the applicants, as it would have led to a faster final determination of the underlying dispute.

Consequently, the applicants' costs were limited to $92,119.92 incurred before the offer.

The court also disallowed the $4,060.18 claimed for online legal research, finding the applicants failed to prove these costs did not fall within standard office overhead.

The applicants, a consortium of construction companies building the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, sought declarations that the COVID-19 pandemic constituted an Emergency under their Project Agreement, entitling them to a Variation Enquiry for an extension of the Substantial Completion Date.

The respondents moved to stay the application, arguing the contract required all litigation to be deferred until after Substantial Completion.

The court dismissed the motion for a stay, finding it would cause irreparable harm by depriving the applicants of their contractual right to seek an extension.

The court granted the declarations, holding that the pandemic was an Emergency and that the respondents had required the applicants to implement additional or overriding procedures (social distancing), thereby triggering the Variation Enquiry process.