James A. Ramsay

The respondent commenced building a house without a building permit and continued construction despite stop work orders and an interlocutory injunction.

The chief building official applied for an injunction and a demolition order under s. 38 of the Building Code Act.

The application judge declined to order demolition, citing the potential benefit to the community and the environmental impact of wasting building materials.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal, finding the application judge erred in law by considering these extraneous factors instead of the public interest in safety, consumer protection, and enforcement of the Act.

The court ordered the respondent to demolish the unauthorized construction within 60 days, failing which the municipality is authorized to do so.

The tenant appealed a Landlord and Tenant Board order terminating his tenancy on the basis that he did not receive notice of the hearing.

The matter had previously been adjourned sine die on consent pending criminal charges.

The Divisional Court found that the tenant did not receive notice of the reconvened hearing, noting his prompt action upon learning of the decision and his prior attendance.

The appeal was allowed, the termination order was set aside, and the matter was remitted for a rehearing.

The appellant appealed an order requiring her to reimburse the respondent for half of a child support overpayment.

The motion judge had found both parties at fault for the overpayment and split the responsibility equally.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding error in the motion judge's decision.

The defendants appealed a decision certifying a class action for intrusion upon seclusion.

The claim arose after a hospital nurse improperly accessed thousands of patient records to steal narcotics from an automated dispensing unit.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal and set aside the certification order, finding that the nurse's fleeting access to limited health information for the sole purpose of stealing drugs did not meet the 'highly offensive' threshold required for the tort of intrusion upon seclusion.

The tenants appealed from interlocutory orders of the Landlord and Tenant Board, arguing that their notice of appeal automatically stayed the proceedings, including a review of an eviction order.

The Divisional Court held that section 210 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 does not confer a right of appeal from an interlocutory order, and therefore the appeal did not stay the proceedings.

The court also found that the tenants were not denied procedural fairness, as they deliberately chose not to attend the review hearing.

The appeals were dismissed.

The applicant union sought judicial review of an arbitrator's decision interpreting the overtime provisions of a collective agreement.

The arbitrator had ruled that overtime pay was based on hours actually worked rather than scheduled hours.

The Divisional Court found the arbitrator's interpretation was logical, transparent, and justified by the wording of the collective agreement.

The court also dismissed a motion to admit fresh evidence, finding the evidence was already before the arbitrator and not essential to the decision.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.

The moving parties brought a motion for leave to appeal the order of Penny J. dated January 28, 2022.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal and awarded costs to the responding parties in the fixed amount of $5,000.

The Children's Aid Society of the Region of Niagara sought summary judgment for extended care of a child without access, for the purpose of adoption, under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017.

The child was found in need of protection.

The mother and First Nation did not participate.

The father, M.M., opposed the motion, arguing for access.

The court found no genuine issue requiring a trial, determining that continued access would not be in the child's best interests and would impair future adoption opportunities, given the parents' inability to provide consistent care and the child's lack of significant bond with them.

The Society's motion was granted, and the child was placed in extended care without access.

This decision addresses motions in three consolidated construction lien actions.

Sutton Forming Inc. sought a declaration on Homes by DeSantis (Lake) Inc.'s minimum holdback obligation under the Construction Lien Act and an order for payment from it.

The court clarified that the holdback is calculated based on the contract price for services actually supplied, not amounts paid, and rejected the owner's objections regarding certificate accuracy and set-off for deficiencies.

The court granted leave for the motion, declared the minimum holdback, and ordered specific payments to Sutton and its sub-subcontractors from the holdback.

This summary judgment motion addressed a dispute between separated parents regarding healthcare decision-making for their three children, specifically concerning vaccinations.

The parties had partial minutes of settlement, but the vaccination issue remained outstanding.

The court considered the children's capacity to consent to medical treatment under the Health Care Consent Act, 1996, and the allocation of decision-making authority.

The court ordered specific vaccination protocols for the youngest child and made the middle child's vaccination contingent on his consent, while affirming the applicant's decision-making authority for the eldest child.

The applicants brought a motion for production of documents from unnamed financial institutions and health care providers, as well as from the deceased's solicitor, in the context of an estate dispute.

The respondent consented to the orders.

The court granted the order for production from the named solicitor but refused to order production from unnamed non-parties, finding it to be an improper fishing expedition and noting that Rule 30.10 does not apply to applications.

The court also refused to freeze the respondent's joint accounts without evidence.

The plaintiff brought a motion for a certificate of pending litigation in an action for specific performance of an agreement of purchase and sale of a residential property.

The transaction failed to close after the property remained occupied by a tenant and other individuals, and the plaintiff subsequently asked for her deposit back.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the plaintiff lost any claim to an interest in the land when she chose to terminate the agreement, and that her allegations of misrepresentation would only give rise to a claim for damages.

The court reconsidered its previous costs decision after receiving late submissions from the self-represented respondent, who had initially sent them to the wrong email address.

The court maintained its view on costs, ordering the respondent to pay $18,691.83 to the applicant.

However, the court accepted the respondent's argument that an order preventing him from taking further steps or filing further proceedings must be sought in a separate motion or application.

The applicant sought full indemnity costs of $18,691.83 after successfully defending the respondent's motion for contempt.

The court found the respondent's motion was frivolous, brought in bad faith to coerce a money payment, and part of a campaign of harassment.

The court awarded the full amount claimed on a full indemnity basis.

While the court declined to deem the costs enforceable as support, it ordered that the respondent may not file any further motions or proceedings against the applicant until the costs order is satisfied.

The Crown brought a motion under s. 771 of the Criminal Code for forfeiture of amounts pledged in a release order after the accused failed to appear in court.

The accused and his main sureties had written down the wrong return date, but the accused surrendered four days later.

The court found that while the sureties acted properly in remedying the failure, they did not act with due diligence to prevent it.

Given the serious nature of the original charges, the court ordered a partial forfeiture of $1,000 each from the accused and the two main sureties.

The applicant mother brought a motion under the Hague Convention for the return of her 13-year-old twin daughters, who were removed by the respondent father to St-Pierre and Miquelon in breach of a separation agreement and an interim parenting order.

The court applied the hybrid approach and determined the children's habitual residence was Ontario.

Finding that none of the exceptions to return under the Convention applied, the court declared the removal wrongful and ordered the children's immediate return to Ontario.

The plaintiffs, owners of a comic book store and a hobby shop, sued the defendant contractors for damages after a water main ruptured during construction, flooding their basements and destroying inventory.

The court found that the plaintiffs could not sue under the contract between the municipality and the defendants, as the exception to privity of contract only operates defensively.

However, the court found the defendants liable in negligence for failing to use alternate backfill or delay compaction when undermining the old, fragile water main.

The court awarded damages of $125,000 to the comic book store and $88,850.50 to the hobby shop, preferring the defendants' expert valuation of the destroyed comic books as random overstock.

The applicant, a medical resident diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, sought judicial review of a university committee's decision dismissing him from a pediatric neurology program for professionalism breaches.

He argued the committee failed to properly consider the duty to accommodate his disability.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding the committee reasonably concluded that accommodating the applicant would cause undue hardship, as it would require constant one-on-one supervision to mitigate the risk to vulnerable patients.

This motion involved cross-applications concerning pleadings amendments and disclosure of settlement minutes in a professional negligence action against a solicitor.

The plaintiffs sought to amend their statement of claim to limit damages to the defendant's proportionate share of fault.

The defendant sought production of confidential settlement minutes from related estate litigation, arguing their relevance to damages and the ability to defend the claim, and also sought leave to add third parties and amend his statement of defence.

The court granted the plaintiffs' motion to amend their claim.

Crucially, the court ordered the disclosure of the settlement minutes, finding them relevant to the assessment of damages and that the public interest in a fair trial and preventing overcompensation outweighed the interest in settlement confidentiality, especially given the confidentiality clause allowed disclosure by court order.

The court also granted the defendant leave to amend his statement of defence.

The plaintiff sued for specific performance of an agreement of purchase and sale, alleging the defendants acted in bad faith by relying on a solicitor approval condition to annul the deal.

The plaintiff brought a motion seeking a ruling that the defendants impliedly waived solicitor-client privilege by pleading they acted in good faith on their solicitor's advice.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the defendants did not base their defence on their state of mind, but merely answered the bad faith claim, and that the solicitor approval clause gave them an absolute right to cancel without waiving privilege over the solicitor's reasons.