Jean Pierre Bouchard

This endorsement addresses three motions in a long-standing negligence action stemming from a 2010 explosion.

The Plaintiffs brought motions to strike the Defendants' pleadings for alleged non-disclosure of settlement agreements and for the recusal of the case management and trial judge due to a perceived apprehension of bias.

The Defendants brought a motion for directions concerning the scope of damage claims, specifically challenging a new "reinvestment claim" advanced by the Plaintiffs.

The court dismissed both of the Plaintiffs' motions, finding no change in the litigation landscape requiring disclosure of the agreements and no reasonable apprehension of bias.

The court granted the Defendants' motion for directions, ruling that the Plaintiffs' new reinvestment theory of damages was unpleaded, untimely, and would cause non-compensable prejudice to the Defendants.

The moving parties sought a stay of interlocutory orders made by a case management/trial judge, which had set aside a pre-trial date and vacated a trial date to allow a motion for directions to proceed.

The moving parties had previously been denied leave to appeal these orders by the Divisional Court and were now seeking leave to appeal that denial to the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the stay motion, finding that the moving parties failed to meet any prong of the RJR-MacDonald test, particularly noting that their motion for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal was unlikely to succeed as the Divisional Court had not mistakenly declined jurisdiction.