R. El-Tawil

The defendant driver brought a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the plaintiffs' negligence claim against him arising from a severe winter motor vehicle collision.

The plaintiffs' vehicle lost control and crossed into the defendant's lane, resulting in a head-on collision.

The motion relied on eyewitness accounts and an expert report suggesting the defendant had no time to react.

The plaintiffs relied on competing expert engineering evidence suggesting the defendant had sufficient time to perceive the hazard and take evasive action.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the conflicting expert opinions on perception, response time, and evasive maneuvers created a genuine issue requiring a trial.

The plaintiffs brought a motion to conditionally strike the defendant's jury notice in a personal injury action arising from a motor vehicle accident, citing court backlogs and pandemic-related delays in London, Ontario.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that striking the jury notice would not improve the likelihood of the four-to-five-week trial being reached, as civil jury trials take precedence over non-jury trials of comparable length when a judge becomes available.

The court emphasized that the substantive right to a jury trial should not be interfered with without compelling reasons, which were not present.

In a franchise disclosure action, the plaintiffs moved to enforce an agreed timetable for a pending summary judgment motion, while the defendants cross-moved for production of an affidavit of documents before being required to respond.

The court held that, following the 2010 amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure, there was no automatic entitlement to an affidavit of documents after the close of pleadings and no right to compel one in the absence of a discovery plan.

Applying the modern summary judgment approach endorsed in Hryniak, the court found that responding parties retained adequate procedural tools to obtain relevant evidence without defaulting to conventional documentary discovery.

The plaintiffs' motion to enforce the timetable was granted with revised dates, and the defendants' cross-motion was dismissed.