Lillianne Francis Cadieux-Shaw

This decision addresses the costs of a motion brought by the defendants to strike, stay, or dismiss a tort action, which was dismissed by the court.

The plaintiff sought costs on a substantial indemnity basis, while the defendants requested partial indemnity or no costs, arguing for divided success.

The court awarded the plaintiff partial indemnity costs of $36,665.22, all-inclusive, finding no divided success and deeming the plaintiff's costs reasonable.

The plaintiff commenced a wrongful dismissal action against her former employer in 2019.

In 2022, she commenced a separate tort action against the employer and a co-worker, alleging intentional infliction of mental distress, intrusion upon seclusion, and the novel torts of harassment and stalking, based on the same factual footprint.

The defendants moved to strike the novel torts and to stay or dismiss the 2022 action as an abuse of process or duplicative proceeding.

The court declined to strike the novel torts, finding it was not plain and obvious they would fail.

The court also declined to stay the 2022 action, finding no abuse of process, but struck the 2022 statement of claim for pleading irregularities with leave to amend, and ordered the two actions consolidated.

The appellant husband appealed a trial judgment that created a novel tort of 'family violence' and awarded the respondent wife $150,000 in damages for intimate partner violence during their marriage.

The Court of Appeal held that while tort claims can be brought in family law proceedings, the trial judge erred in creating a new tort because existing torts—battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress—adequately address the pattern of physical, emotional, and financial abuse.

The Court also declined to recognize a proposed tort of 'coercive control'.

The Court upheld the $100,000 award for compensatory and aggravated damages but set aside the $50,000 punitive damages award, finding the other damages sufficient to achieve condemnation.

The moving party sought a panel review of a prior order by Pardu J.A. that dismissed her motion to set aside a Registrar's order dismissing her appeal for delay and to extend time to perfect the appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the review motion, finding no error in the motion judge's assessment of the moving party's delay or the lack of merit in the underlying appeal.

The appellant/moving party sought to review a previous order granting security for costs and motion costs.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the review motion, finding no reversible error in the original decision.

The moving party was ordered to post security for costs and pay specified motion costs within 30 days, failing which her further review motion would be automatically dismissed by the Registrar.

This endorsement clarifies a previous order dated October 15, 2021, due to disputes and uncertainty raised by the respondents regarding rental arrears, utilities, and obligations concerning a fence.

The court confirmed its original interpretation of the rental abatement period (November 2020 to February 2021), upheld the previously ordered amounts for utilities and BIA, and reaffirmed its decision on the fence, granting the respondents an extension to provide a modified design.

The appellant, Dr. Mistry, appealed an Associate Justice's order that granted a motion to add him and Dr. Karmali-Rawji as defendants in a medical malpractice action.

The core issue was whether the claim against Dr. Mistry for delayed diagnosis and failure to refer was statute-barred under the Limitations Act, 2002.

The Master had found the claim was discovered in May 2017 when the plaintiff's counsel reviewed medical records, thus the limitation period had not expired.

Dr. Mistry argued the claim was discoverable earlier, by February 2015.

The court dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding error in the Master's decision.

It affirmed that the plaintiff, an unsophisticated litigant, and his counsel could not have drawn a plausible inference of liability against Dr. Mistry without the new information from the full medical records, which revealed the spinal lesion was diagnosable earlier.

The appellant, Elisa Romero Hategan, moved to set aside the Registrar's dismissal of her appeal and for an extension of time to perfect it.

The underlying appeal was from a summary judgment that dismissed Hategan's claims (wrongful appropriation of personality, civil conspiracy, injurious falsehood, negligence, unlawful interference with economic interests) and awarded damages for defamation against her, along with a permanent injunction.

The Court of Appeal considered the factors for extending time to perfect an appeal, including the length of delay, explanation for delay, prejudice to respondents, and merits of the appeal.

The court found the appellant's delay unreasonable and the appeal to have little or no merit, as her original claims lacked evidentiary support for false statements and the defamation counterclaim was well-founded.

The motion to set aside the dismissal and extend time was dismissed.

Following the dismissal of the plaintiff's defamation action under the anti-SLAPP provisions of the Courts of Justice Act, the court determined the appropriate scale and quantum of costs.

The court declined to award full indemnity costs, finding that the plaintiff was not a powerful entity using litigation to intimidate a vulnerable opponent and that the claim had substantial merit.

Applying a modest discount for the defendants' delay in bringing the motion, the court awarded the defendants $75,000 in costs on a partial indemnity scale.

The defendants, a national broadcaster and its employees, brought a motion to dismiss the plaintiff's defamation action under the anti-SLAPP provisions of the Courts of Justice Act.

The plaintiff, a student travel company, alleged that the defendants' reporting on the death of a student during a trip was defamatory.

The court found that the expression related to a matter of public interest and that the plaintiff failed to show there was no valid defence, specifically the defence of fair comment.

The court also found the balance of harms favoured protecting the expression, and dismissed the action.

The plaintiff, a former member of a white supremacist group, sued the defendants, also former members or individuals involved in anti-hate work, alleging they appropriated her life story and committed various torts including injurious falsehood, civil conspiracy, and negligence.

The defendants moved for summary judgment to dismiss the claims, and one defendant counterclaimed for defamation, invasion of privacy, and appropriation of personality.

The court dismissed the plaintiff's claims as frivolous and vexatious, finding no evidence to support any of the alleged torts.

The court granted the defendant's counterclaim, awarding $100,000 in general damages, $50,000 in aggravated damages, and $50,000 in punitive damages, along with a permanent injunction.

The plaintiffs, owners of a shoe restoration business, brought a motion for an interim injunction to compel the defendant, a former employee, to remove social media posts alleging that the plaintiffs were racist and had terminated her for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

The court applied the stringent test for injunctive relief in defamation actions, which requires the moving party to show that the words are clearly defamatory and that any defences of justification or fair comment will inevitably fail.

The court found that, based on the evidence presented, it would not be perverse for a trier of fact to find that the defences of justification or fair comment had been made out.

The motion for an interim injunction was dismissed.