Jaki Freeman

In a bifurcated family law trial, the court determined issues of spousal support entitlement, income for support purposes, and a claim for a resulting trust over a property.

The court found the wife had an ongoing entitlement to spousal support.

The husband's income was imputed to include $30,000 annually in housing and other benefits provided by his wealthy father.

Finally, the court held that a property purchased by the father and placed in the names of the husband and wife was a gratuitous transfer.

The wife failed to rebut the presumption of resulting trust, and the property was declared to be held in trust for the father.

The three accused, Amandeep Jodha, Manjot Chadde, and Gurvir Deol, were charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon following a violent brawl.

The Crown's theory relied on identifying the perpetrators and establishing a common intention to bring weapons.

The court found all three accused not guilty, concluding that the Crown failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt due to the unreliability and internal inconsistencies of all witness testimonies, making it impossible to identify the perpetrators.

A joint application for a stay of proceedings based on s.11(b) Charter delay was dismissed as moot, though the court noted it would have been dismissed on its merits due to a combination of defence delay, inherent delay, and exceptional circumstances.

Emilio Georgiev was found guilty by a jury of robbery, assault causing bodily harm, aggravated assault, uttering a threat to cause death, and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

The victim, who is legally blind, was attacked with a knife, robbed, and had his CNIB cane stolen.

The Crown sought a sentence of 10 to 12 years, emphasizing denunciation and deterrence due to the violent, callous nature of the crimes, the vulnerability of the victim, the use of a weapon, and the offender's criminal record and commission of the offences while on bail.

Defence counsel sought a sentence of 2 to 4 years or time served, highlighting the offender's youth, family support, work ethic, and lack of permanent physical injury to the victim.

The court considered aggravating factors, including the victim's vulnerability, the gratuitous theft of the CNIB cane, the use of a weapon, and the offender's criminal history and bail status.

Mitigating factors included family support, work ethic, and rehabilitation goals.

The court sentenced the offender to 7 years imprisonment, less 771 days for pretrial custody (calculated at 1.5:1), and imposed a lifetime firearms prohibition and a DNA order.

Enhanced credit for harsh incarceration conditions was denied due to lack of evidence of adverse effect on the offender.

The offender was convicted of manslaughter as a party to a shooting death committed by a co-accused.

The Crown sought a sentence of six to eight years, arguing the four-year mandatory minimum for manslaughter with a firearm applied.

The court found the offender did not know the co-accused had a gun and held that the mandatory minimum does not apply in such circumstances.

Weighing the offender's lack of prior record, strong prospects for rehabilitation, and lesser degree of responsibility against the gravity of the offence, the court imposed a sentence of four years (credited as time served) followed by two years' probation.

In a first degree murder trial arising from a fatal shooting outside an apartment elevator, the Crown sought to admit ante-mortem statements of the deceased and multiple prior statements of a key eyewitness who fled to the United States before trial.

Applying the principled hearsay framework, the court found necessity established for both categories because the deceased had died and the eyewitness had deliberately removed herself from the court's reach despite diligent efforts to secure her attendance.

The deceased's statements were admitted because their temporal proximity, surrounding circumstances, partial corroboration, and available cross-examination of the reporting witnesses provided threshold reliability.

The eyewitness's statements were excluded because she had repeatedly lied under oath and to police, had a possible motive to deflect blame, and her prior preliminary inquiry testimony offered no meaningful substitute for contemporaneous cross-examination.

The accused was charged with nine offences, including robbery, aggravated assault, and possession of an imitation firearm, following a violent home invasion.

The Crown relied on circumstantial evidence, including the accused's possession of stolen property shortly after the robbery, cell phone records, and DNA evidence linking the victim's blood to a jacket found in the accused's bedroom.

The accused raised an alibi defence through his girlfriend's testimony.

The court rejected the alibi evidence as not credible and applied the doctrine of recent possession and the test for circumstantial evidence.

The court found the accused guilty on all counts, concluding he was a party to the common intention to commit the armed robbery and that the aggravated assault was objectively foreseeable.

The appellant sought to amend her claim against the respondent and add two new defendants.

The motion judge dismissed the motion, finding that the proposed claims were prescribed by the limitation period and that the appellant's negligence claim was barred by res judicata due to a prior small claims proceeding.

The motion judge also granted summary judgment dismissing the claim against the respondent, finding no genuine issue for trial as the appellant's contract was with a corporation, not the respondent personally.

The Court of Appeal found no basis to interfere with the motion judge's conclusions and dismissed the appeal.