Tae Mee Park

Following a successful motion by the defendants to strike the plaintiff's Statement of Claim with leave to amend, the defendants sought substantial indemnity costs of $51,710.82.

The court found no basis for substantial indemnity costs and considered the partial indemnity claim of $34,100.37 excessive due to over-lawyering.

Taking into account the plaintiff's recent termination and lack of severance, the court fixed costs at $15,000 on a partial indemnity basis, payable in the cause.

The defendants brought a motion to strike the plaintiff's statement of claim, which alleged wrongful/constructive dismissal, negligence, harassment, discrimination, and intentional infliction of mental suffering against his former employer, the NHLPA, its insurer, and several individual employees.

The court struck the 62-page statement of claim in its entirety for failing to plead material facts concisely and for pleading evidence and irrelevant facts.

The court dismissed the action against the insurer and all individual defendants except one manager, finding no reasonable cause of action against them.

The plaintiff was granted leave to amend his claim to properly plead constructive/wrongful dismissal, negligence, and human rights violations against the NHLPA, and intentional infliction of mental suffering against the one manager.

The appellant sought an extension of time to perfect her appeal from the dismissal of her defamation action under an Anti-SLAPP motion and the corresponding costs endorsement.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the appellant failed to demonstrate a continuing intention to appeal, provided an inadequate explanation for the delay, caused prejudice to the respondents, and had little chance of success on the merits of her appeal, including constitutional questions and the costs award.

TSN brought a motion to set aside an ex parte sealing order that restricted public access to a court file involving the Niagara Ice Dogs and the Ontario Hockey League.

The underlying dispute concerned an OHL investigation into an alleged unwritten contract between the team and a player.

The court applied the Sierra Club test and found that while protecting the identity of minor players was an important public interest, there was no real and substantial risk to that interest on the evidence, especially since the complainant's identity was already public.

The sealing order was set aside, and costs were awarded to TSN and the OHL against the team.

This endorsement lifts a stay on a previous decision released on April 21, 2017, after the parties confirmed that no appeal was contemplated.

The materials in question are now permitted to be released to the parties and the public as outlined in the original decision.

The applicants, a consortium of media organizations, sought to lift sealing orders and prevent a publication ban on judicial authorizations, including a search warrant, related to an investigation into Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for allegedly leaking cabinet confidential information.

Vice-Admiral Norman and the Crown argued for a publication ban to protect his fair trial rights, while interveners (Chantier Davie Canada Inc. and Federal Fleet Services Inc.) sought to maintain sealing orders for commercially sensitive pricing data.

Applying the Dagenais/Mentuck test, the court found no serious risk to the proper administration of justice or fair trial rights from extensive publicity, noting that jurors are presumed capable of impartiality and that the alleged misconduct did not create an "unshakable stigma." The court also considered the impact of social media on the efficacy of publication bans.

The application to lift sealing orders and deny a publication ban was largely granted, with the exception of specific commercial pricing information from the interveners and uncontested redactions for cabinet confidentiality and third-party personal information.

The plaintiff appealed a Master's decision ordering him to post security for costs in the amounts of $60,000 for CanJet Airlines and $80,000 for 1791949 Ontario Limited (TGAS).

The appeal challenged the Master's findings on impecuniosity, the sufficiency of an adverse cost protection policy, and the plaintiff's chance of success.

The court upheld the Master's decision, finding no palpable and overriding error or misapprehension of evidence, and dismissed the appeal.

On a Rule 21 motion to strike in an international air carriage action, the court determined whether the Montreal Convention governed claims arising from in-flight conduct, disembarkation, police detention, and alleged illness.

The court held article 17 applied because the pleaded incident formed a continuous chain beginning on board and continuing through disembarkation, and qualified as an accident under the Convention.

Claims for psychological harm, mental distress, and punitive or exemplary damages were held unrecoverable under article 29 and settled jurisprudence where no compensable bodily injury was pleaded for those heads.

The claim for bodily injury based on alleged severe bronchitis was permitted to proceed.

The motion was therefore granted in part with the remaining claim limited to bodily injury damages.

After dismissing an application for a Norwich order compelling a newspaper to reveal confidential sources related to a business news story, the court addressed the issue of costs.

The unsuccessful applicant argued that no costs should be awarded because the proceeding raised novel and public interest issues linked to a proposed securities class action.

The court held that although the litigation had some public interest elements, it was fundamentally a private claim seeking recovery of trading losses.

Applying the factors in Rule 57.01 and considering the access to justice concerns noted by the Court of Appeal in class action jurisprudence, the court reduced the respondents’ claimed costs but fixed a substantial award.

Costs were ordered against the applicant on a partial indemnity basis.

The applicant sought a Norwich order compelling a journalist and newspaper to disclose the identities of confidential sources quoted in an article concerning the BCE leveraged buy-out negotiations.

The applicant alleged the sources’ statements were misleading or unlawful under the Securities Act and caused trading losses, and intended to pursue a proposed securities class action against them.

The court applied the Norwich test together with the Wigmore framework for journalist‑source privilege.

It found that any alleged breach of securities law was speculative and minimal, and that the public interest in protecting confidential journalistic sources outweighed the limited interest in disclosure for a civil claim.

The journalist‑source privilege was therefore upheld and disclosure refused.