J. Edgar Sexton

The plaintiffs sought damages for economic loss and property damage after a fire broke out on an oil drilling rig.

The fire was caused by arcing in a heat trace system that ignited inflammable Thermaclad wrap.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the manufacturer, Raychem, breached its duty to warn the rig owner of the product's inflammability and could not rely on the learned intermediary defence.

However, the builder, SJSL, was shielded from liability by an exclusion clause in its contract with the owner.

The Court declined to allow the rig's lessees to recover contractual relational economic loss due to policy concerns over indeterminate liability.

Finally, the Court abolished the common law maritime rule that contributory negligence acts as a complete bar to recovery, allowing the rig owner to recover 40% of its damages despite being 60% at fault.

The respondent, a lawyer, was defamed by the appellants who published documents falsely alleging he had misappropriated funds intended for a community organization.

The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the trial judge's finding that the publications were defamatory and that the appellants were jointly and severally liable as joint tortfeasors.

The Court rejected the defence of qualified privilege, finding that the appellants had exceeded the limits of the occasion and were motivated by express malice.

The Court restored the trial judge's award of $140,000 in compensatory damages and $325,000 in special damages for loss of business, as well as the award of prejudgment interest for 12.5 years.

The appellant municipality sought restitution from the federal and provincial governments for monies paid to support juvenile delinquents placed in group homes under an ultra vires provision of the Juvenile Delinquents Act.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeals, holding that the municipality failed to establish that its payments conferred an 'incontrovertible benefit' on either level of government.

Neither government was under a legal obligation to pay for the juveniles' care, and the payments did not discharge a liability or save them an inevitable expense.

The respondent sued the appellant for price discrimination under s. 31.1 of the Combines Investigation Act, which creates a civil cause of action for certain infractions of the Act.

The appellant challenged the constitutional validity of s. 31.1, arguing it fell under provincial jurisdiction over property and civil rights.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the Combines Investigation Act is valid federal legislation under the general trade and commerce power (s. 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867).

The Court further held that s. 31.1 is intra vires Parliament because it is functionally related to the general objective of the legislation and is an integral part of the regulatory scheme.

Minority shareholders and debenture stockholders challenged the sale of surplus railway lands under nineteenth-century perpetual railway leases and a related agreement transferring lands to a subsidiary of the majority shareholder.

The Court held that the lessee had acquired, under the lease and statutory framework, the power to sell surplus lands, that the debenture stock constituted an incumbrance for purposes of the 1891 statute, and that reinvestment of sale proceeds in the railway satisfied the statutory scheme.

The Court further held that approved rail line abandonments did not breach the lease, the shareholder meeting approving the later transaction was validly called, and the majority shareholder lawfully held and voted shares.

The lessor was not entitled in law or equity to recover its reversionary interest in lands sold.

Appeals were dismissed and the respondent’s cross-appeals were allowed in part.

The appellant developer purchased lots in a subdivision but refused to assume the original subdivider's obligations to install municipal services.

After protracted negotiations failed, the respondent municipality passed a by-law without notice to the appellant, deeming the lots not to be a registered plan of subdivision.

The appellant sought judicial review to quash the by-law.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that while the municipality's action was quasi-judicial and attracted the duty of fairness (audi alteram partem), the discretionary remedy of certiorari was denied because of the appellant's conduct in attempting to avoid its obligations and evade municipal regulation through checkerboarding.