Jan-Paul Waldin

The moving party sought leave to appeal the decision of Sutherland J. dated June 11, 2024.

The Divisional Court denied the motion for leave to appeal.

Costs were fixed at $1,000 all-inclusive to the responding parties who appeared, with the amount reduced due to the failure to file a cost outline.

The parties in multiple related actions jointly consented to have their actions case managed by a case management Master under Rule 77.05 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

The court, satisfied that the criteria under Rule 77.05(4) were met, referred the matter to Master McAfee for assignment of a case management master.

The appellants appealed a summary judgment dismissing their claims for recovery under a contingency retainer agreement.

The corporate appellant abandoned its appeal.

The individual appellant's appeal was dismissed because he had failed to respond to a Request to Admit, resulting in deemed admissions that nothing was owed by the respondent.

The Court of Appeal found the appeal devoid of merit and awarded substantial indemnity costs against the individual appellant.

The appellant appealed a decision recognizing and enforcing two Russian arbitral awards against it.

The application judge had refused to consider the appellant's evidence of alleged death threats, which the appellant claimed prevented its participation in the arbitration, on the basis of issue estoppel from a prior proceeding.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that issue estoppel did not apply and that the application judge erred by failing to exercise residual discretion to prevent injustice.

The enforcement application was remitted for a fresh determination.

The respondent on appeal brought a motion for security for costs of the appeal.

The moving party had successfully applied to enforce Russian arbitration awards against the appellant in Ontario.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, holding that a respondent on appeal cannot rely on Rule 61.06(1)(b) to obtain security for costs against a defendant/appellant, as no party should have to give security simply to defend itself.

Furthermore, the moving party could not use the 'other good reason' provision in Rule 61.06(1)(c) to bypass this restriction.

The appeals concerned the constitutionality of the former rape-shield provisions in Criminal Code ss. 276 and 277, which restricted defence use of a complainant’s prior sexual conduct in sexual offence prosecutions.

The Court held that s. 276 violated ss. 7 and 11(d) of the Charter because its blanket exclusion could bar relevant defence evidence whose probative value was not substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, and that the provision was not saved by s. 1.

Section 277, which barred sexual reputation evidence to support or attack credibility, was upheld as targeting an illegitimate use of evidence.

The Court also held that preliminary inquiry judges lacked jurisdiction to determine the constitutional validity of the impugned provisions, so the appeals from the committals nevertheless failed and the matters were to proceed to trial.