Naomi Sayers

In an application to prove a lost will, the applicant and respondents brought competing motions.

The respondents sought a Mareva injunction, Norwich orders, an accounting, and to compel cross-examinations of the applicant and a non-party witness.

The applicant moved to set aside certificates of non-attendance and prohibit further motions.

The court set aside the certificates of non-attendance, finding the respondents failed to exercise reasonable diligence in scheduling the cross-examinations.

The court dismissed the respondents' requests for a Mareva injunction and Norwich orders, finding no evidence of a real risk of asset dissipation or wrongdoing, though it granted limited documentary discovery from a non-party law firm.

Costs of $40,000 were awarded to the applicant.

The Ontario Review Board held an annual review hearing for the accused, who was previously found not criminally responsible for assault with a weapon and uttering threats.

The accused has diagnoses of schizophrenia, substance use disorder, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

The Board accepted the joint submission of the parties, supported by the treating psychiatrist's evidence, that the accused continues to pose a significant threat to public safety.

The Board ordered the maintenance of the current detention order at the hospital, noting the plan to transition the accused to a supervised group home once approved.

The appellant, M.R., appealed from a Superior Court order upholding the Consent and Capacity Board’s finding that he lacked capacity to consent to treatment.

The respondent, Dr. Achal Mishra, moved to adduce fresh evidence showing that M.R. was found capable of consenting to treatment in July 2024 and has maintained capacity since.

The Court of Appeal found the appeal to be moot, as there was no longer a live issue, and dismissed the appeal, admitting the fresh evidence and making no order as to costs.

The appellant, SI, appealed a Consent and Capacity Board decision upholding Dr. Jeanetta Viljoen’s finding that SI was incapable of consenting to treatment with antipsychotic drugs.

The court dismissed the appeal, finding that the Board correctly identified and applied the statutory test for capacity under the Health Care Consent Act.

The court held that corroborative evidence, as required by the Evidence Act, was present, including the notes and observations of Dr. Banks and other medical history.

The court confirmed that a second clinical opinion is not required for corroboration and that the Board’s findings were supported by the evidence.

Karen Bell appealed the dismissal of her defamation action against Garden River First Nation and two councillors.

The action arose from a Censure Motion passed by the Council, which stated Bell had shared "false information" in a Facebook post.

The motion judge found the statement prima facie defamatory but upheld the defence of justification, concluding the information was indeed false.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Bell's motion to adduce fresh evidence, finding it irrelevant, and affirmed the motion judge's interpretation of the Censure Motion.

The Court agreed that the specific quoted information in Bell's Facebook post was false and misleading, thereby upholding the defence of justification.

The appeal was dismissed.

The Crown appealed the accused's acquittals on impaired driving and 'over 80' charges.

The trial judge had excluded breath samples under s. 24(2) of the Charter after finding a s. 8 breach, and acquitted on the impaired charge due to a reasonable doubt caused by head trauma.

The Superior Court of Justice allowed the appeal, finding the trial judge committed palpable and overriding errors by failing to consider the accused's admission of drunkenness when assessing the officer's reasonable and probable grounds, and by improperly applying voir dire evidence to the trial proper.

A new trial was ordered.

The applicant, an advocacy group for strippers, brought a judicial review application challenging COVID-19 regulations that temporarily closed strip clubs in Stage 2 and Stage 3 areas.

Before the application was heard, the impugned regulations were revoked and replaced, allowing strip clubs to operate with safety requirements.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application for mootness, declining to exercise its discretion to hear the case on the merits as the live controversy had ended and there was no cogent reason to depart from the general rule against hearing moot cases.

The applicant, a registered band member of the Batchewana First Nation, sought judicial review of his eviction by the Batchewana First Nation Housing Authority from a residence subject to a rent-to-own agreement.

The Court determined that the eviction decision arose from a private contract dispute over property maintenance and rent arrears rather than the exercise of a public law power.

Applying the Air Canada factors, the Court held the Housing Authority was not acting as a 'federal board, commission or other tribunal'.

As the matter was private in nature, the Federal Court lacked jurisdiction, and the application was dismissed.

The applicants sought judicial review of the Mississauga First Nation's refusal to disclose documents requested under PIPEDA.

The request followed decisions removing the applicants from the First Nation's reserve lands.

The Federal Court dismissed the application, finding that PIPEDA did not apply because the removal decision was not a commercial activity, and the request was a collateral attack on the unchallenged removal decisions.

The applicant, an advocacy group for strippers, brought a preliminary motion for an order permitting the anonymization of affidavits to be sworn by strippers in support of an application for judicial review challenging COVID-19 regulations.

The applicant argued that publicly identifying the affiants would put their economic and family safety at risk due to the stigma associated with their occupation.

Applying the Dagenais/Mentuck test, the court found that the applicant established a serious risk to the administration of justice and that there was no reasonable alternative to the order.

The court granted the motion, allowing the use of non-identifying initials in publicly available documents, provided that the respondent and the court have access to the affiants' full names in a sealed record.