Peter N. Mantas

The Crown appealed the acquittal of Damodar Arapakota on a charge of bribing a foreign public official contrary to section 3(1)(a) of the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA).

The respondent had paid for a family vacation in Orlando, Florida for a Botswana government official in exchange for letters confirming the government's intention to award a contract to the respondent's company.

The trial judge acquitted the respondent, finding that the Crown had failed to prove that the respondent received a material business advantage in return for the trip and that there was insufficient nexus between the trip and the letters.

The majority of the Court of Appeal dismissed the Crown's appeal, finding that while the trial judge erred in requiring proof of a specific act or omission, this error did not affect the outcome because the trial judge correctly found that the respondent received no meaningful business advantage.

Justice Monahan dissented, arguing that the trial judge's interpretation of "as consideration for" was unduly narrow and that the acquittal should be set aside for a new trial.

The applicants, minority shareholders of Xtreme Trampoline Park Inc. and XTP Holdings Inc., brought an oppression remedy application against the majority shareholder, Sixin Wei, alleging he denied them access to financial records, withheld proceeds from a property sale, and surreptitiously obtained funds held in trust.

The court found Mr. Wei's conduct oppressive, unfairly prejudicial, and unfairly disregarded the applicants' reasonable expectations regarding financial transparency and distribution of sale proceeds.

The court ordered Mr. Wei to provide full access to accounting records, a detailed accounting of funds, and to preserve a significant portion of the disputed funds in an interest-bearing account pending further agreement or court order.

This is an appeal from a Divisional Court decision that granted judicial review, quashing an administrative decision and a request for bids related to the procurement of identification cards.

The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) required card stock to be produced in Canada, which Thales DIS Canada Inc. (Thales) challenged as discriminatory under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The Divisional Court found the MTO's decision and request for bids unreasonable.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, finding that the Divisional Court misapplied the reasonableness standard of review by conducting a de novo assessment instead of focusing on the administrative decision-maker's reasons.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the Director's decision was reasonable and that the request for bids was not separately subject to judicial review given the existence of an adequate internal dispute resolution process.

The Regional Municipality of York brought a motion for a limited permanent sealing order on consent over proprietary information submitted by two bidders during a competitive procurement process for public transportation services.

The court applied the three-part test from Sherman Estate and found that court openness posed a serious risk to the important public interest of maintaining the integrity of future procurement processes.

The court granted the sealing order, concluding that the benefits of protecting the commercially sensitive information outweighed the negative effects on court openness.

This endorsement addresses costs following the dismissal of an urgent injunction application.

The court considered three hearings: the initial injunction application, a hearing regarding the respondent's breach of undertaking, and a hearing requested by the respondent to vary an interim order.

The injunction was dismissed due to the applicant's failure to provide an undertaking as to damages.

The court awarded costs to the respondent for the initial injunction hearing and for responding to the applicant's post-decision attempt to provide the undertaking, but denied costs for the hearings related to the undertaking breach and the failed attempt to vary the interim order, finding them unnecessary.

The court also assessed the reasonableness of the respondent's claimed legal hours and hourly rates.

The applicant sought judicial review of the respondent municipality's decision to award a transit operations and maintenance contract to a competing bidder.

The applicant argued that the successful bidder's proposal was non-compliant with the Request for Proposals because it included a subcontractor who was already the contractor for another transit division, allegedly violating a one-contractor-per-division rule.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding that the municipality's interpretation of the RFP—that the restriction applied only to contractors, not subcontractors—was reasonable and that the procurement process was fair and transparent.

The applicant, Cash Cloud Inc., sought an urgent interlocutory injunction to restrain the respondent, BitAccess Inc., from terminating a Master Purchase Agreement, deactivating cloud-based software used for cryptocurrency kiosks, and deleting customer data.

The court found it had jurisdiction to grant interim relief despite a mandatory arbitration clause.

The court granted a 60-day order preserving the customer data to allow the applicant to download it.

However, the court dismissed the injunction to restrain the software deactivation because the applicant failed to provide the mandatory undertaking as to damages required by Rule 40.03 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario heard a motion to quash a motion for leave to appeal.

The underlying dispute arose from a commercial arbitration where the arbitrator made a preliminary ruling on jurisdiction over a counterclaim.

The Superior Court reversed this ruling.

The Court of Appeal granted the motion to quash, holding that under section 17(9) of the Arbitration Act, 1991, there is no right of appeal from a court's decision reviewing an arbitrator's preliminary jurisdictional ruling, distinguishing it from an appeal of an award.

The parties brought cross-motions arising from examinations for discovery in an action concerning a cancelled procurement process for visa application centres.

The defendant sought further financial documents from the plaintiff, which the court dismissed, finding the plaintiff had already produced all existing relevant documents.

The plaintiff sought answers to several refused questions.

The court ordered the defendant to disclose the name of its forensic accountant or undertake not to call them at trial, produce communications with third parties as common interest privilege did not apply, answer whether it could cancel the procurement at will, and produce a 2005 contract.

The court upheld the defendant's refusal to disclose the contract's Approval Value due to Cabinet confidence privilege.

The applicant sought judicial review of a government procurement Request for Bids (RFB) for identity card production and the subsequent dismissal of its bid dispute complaint.

The applicant argued that the RFB's domestic production requirement violated the non-discrimination provisions of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).

The Divisional Court found that the administrative decision dismissing the complaint was unreasonable, as it failed to properly apply the test for necessity under the public safety exception of CETA.

The Court quashed both the decision and the RFB, finding that the domestic production requirement was not justified on the record.

The defendants brought a motion to strike the plaintiffs' claims for oppression.

The plaintiffs, former minority shareholders, alleged that the defendants misappropriated corporate assets and sold shares below true value.

The court struck the claims against the Murison Family Trust with leave to amend, as a trust is not a legal entity.

The claims against 2123388 Ontario Inc. and Exia Biomedical Inc. were struck without leave to amend, as 212 lacked the capacity to oppress and the claims against Exia belonged to the corporation and required a derivative action.

The claim against Obotics Inc. was struck with leave to amend, as no material facts of wrongful conduct were pleaded.

The plaintiffs brought an action seeking restitution of royalties paid to SOCAN for the transmission of ringtones, arguing the payments were not legally required following Supreme Court of Canada decisions finding that downloading a musical work is not a communication to the public by telecommunication.

The court dismissed the action, applying the doctrine of issue estoppel based on a prior Federal Court of Appeal decision that upheld the Copyright Board's certification of the ringtone tariff, and finding that the plaintiffs' claim was barred by a 2010 settlement agreement.

The court also dismissed the plaintiffs' unjust enrichment claim, finding that the certified tariff and the settlement agreement provided juristic reasons for the payments.

SOCAN's counterclaim for unpaid royalties was granted in part.

The plaintiff, a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, was disqualified by the Dispute Resolution Appeals Committee (DRAC) following a complaint about his campaign materials.

He brought a summary judgment motion seeking to restore his candidacy, arguing breach of contract, procedural unfairness, and bad faith.

The court found that while the process was fair and there was no bad faith, the DRAC lacked the authority under the party's rules to disqualify a candidate.

The court set aside the disqualification and restored the Chief Returning Officer's original ruling, which imposed a penalty but not disqualification, without prejudice to the Leadership Election Organizing Committee's right to consider the matter.

The applicant, Dimitrious Karahalios, a disqualified leadership candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, brought an application seeking reinstatement and release of campaign funds.

The respondents, including the Conservative Party and its Fund, brought a preliminary motion to strike the application, arguing it was barred by the Leadership Rules and disclosed no reasonable cause of action, and that individual committee members were not proper parties.

The court dismissed the motion to strike the application for not disclosing a reasonable cause of action, finding it was not plain and obvious that the Leadership Rules contractually precluded the applicant's claims.

The individual respondents (members of the Dispute Resolution Appeals Committee and Chief Returning Officer) were removed as parties by agreement.

The court converted the application into an action and scheduled a summary judgment motion to efficiently determine the merits of the dispute, given the complex and novel legal issues regarding the judicial review of unincorporated associations.

The defendant in a $195 million procurement dispute served summonses on three non-party witnesses for examination prior to a summary judgment motion.

The non-parties and plaintiffs moved to quash the summonses, arguing they were an abuse of process due to short notice, failure to provide relevant pleadings, and overly broad document requests.

The court agreed, finding the defendant's conduct in serving the summonses and refusing a brief postponement constituted an abuse of process.

The summonses were quashed, and the defendant's motion to compel answers to refusals was dismissed.

In an action concerning a procurement process for Visa Application Centre services, the parties sought to settle the terms of a confidentiality order governing the disclosure of Third Party Information.

The sole issue was the wording of a paragraph dictating the scope of submissions that affected Third Parties could make on a future motion to determine confidentiality.

The plaintiffs argued for a narrower scope, while the defendant and Third Parties argued for a broader scope.

The court adopted the plaintiffs' proposed wording, finding it addressed issues clearly relevant to the Third Parties without tying the hands of the judge hearing the future motion, but noted this did not necessarily preclude Third Parties from raising other issues.

The plaintiffs brought a motion for particulars and an extension of time to deliver a reply, achieving mixed success.

The court ordered the defendant to provide one critical particular regarding the value of a contract, while dismissing the other requests.

The parties could not agree on costs.

Given the mixed success and the early stage of the case-managed action, the court ordered that the costs of the motion be payable in the cause.

The plaintiffs brought a motion to strike the defendants' statement of defence, either in its entirety or specific paragraphs, alleging breaches of pleading rules, irrelevance, scandalous, frivolous, vexatious, prolix, argumentative content, and improper allegations regarding the plaintiffs' motive.

The court also addressed a preliminary issue of settlement privilege concerning a letter.

The Master ruled the letter was protected by settlement privilege and ordered its removal from the record.

While declining to strike the entire statement of defence, the Master struck specific paragraphs (3, 50, 60, 67, 68, 71) with leave to amend, finding them to be scandalous, frivolous, and vexatious due to an absence of material facts, argumentative nature, bare allegations, inflammatory attacks, or bare conclusions and opinions.

The plaintiffs brought a motion seeking particulars of allegations in the defendant's statement of defence and an extension of time to deliver a reply.

The defendant argued that pleadings were closed and that an affidavit was required to support the demand for particulars.

The court found that a demand for particulars could be made regardless of the status of pleadings and that an affidavit was not required if the allegations were "general and bald." The court ordered the defendant to provide particulars regarding the value of the contract (paragraph 9 of the statement of defence) as it was deemed a material fact and a "general and bald" denial.

However, the court denied the demand for particulars for the remaining ten allegations, finding them sufficiently detailed or within the plaintiffs' knowledge, and that an affidavit was necessary for those.

The plaintiffs were granted an extension to deliver their reply.

The applicant, a road paving contractor, sought judicial review of the respondent municipality's decision to debar it from bidding on municipal contracts for four years.

The debarment was based on the applicant's ongoing litigation against the municipality, health and safety violations including a workplace fatality, and a history of poor contractual performance and abusive behaviour.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding that while the initial debarment decision lacked procedural fairness, the defect was cured by a subsequent bona fide reconsideration process.

The court further held that the municipality's by-law was valid and the debarment decision was reasonable.