Court File and Parties
SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE - ONTARIO
RE: A.C., Plaintiff
– and –
C.M. and THE CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY, Defendants
BEFORE: E.M. Morgan J.
COUNSEL: Howard Wolch, for the Plaintiff Carole Jenkins, for the Defendant, The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto Natalie Kolos, for the proposed Defendant, Toronto Police Service Insiyah Kanjee, for the proposed Defendant, Attorney General of Ontario
HEARD: November 2, 2021
ENDORSEMENT
1The Defendant, Children’s Aid Society (“CAS”), has brought a motion under Rule 21 to strike out the negligence claim against it.
2At the same time, the Plaintiff has brought motions to add two new parties – Toronto Police Service (“TPS”) and the Attorney General of Ontario (“AG”). The Plaintiff also seeks leave against the AG under the Crown Liability Proceedings Act (“CLPA”) to plead malicious prosecution. In addition, the Plaintiff has brought a WAGG motion for disclosure of documentation from TPS, although that motion may become unnecessary as disclosure by the TPS will be handled in the ordinary course of the discovery process if TPS gets added as a defendant.
3The entire package of motions has been booked for 2 hours. It is not feasible to address all of these today. In fact, the Plaintiff has not yet done his pleading amendments, and so there is no prospect of all of this being accomplished today. In addition, it does not make sense for all of these motions to be heard at the same time. They need to be sequenced so that, for example, the pleadings are finalized before the Rule 21 motion to strike them can be heard.
4The Plaintiff also seeks to have a publication ban issued during the course of related criminal proceedings lifted or varied so that Plaintiff’s counsel can have access to materials that have not been disclosed to him. Counsel all now agree that a motion to vary or lift a publication ban is to be heard by the judge who issued the ban. Accordingly, the motion must be scheduled with the court’s Criminal Office and not be packaged together with the other civil motions here.
5The pleading amendment motions (adding TPS and the AG as parties), together with the leave motion under the CLPA, are to be heard at the same time. Given the tangle of issues, I consider it preferable for them all to be addressed by a judge rather than piece out some of the issues and send them to an associate judge for yet another hearing with its attendant scheduling issues.
6This group of procedural motions brought by the Plaintiff are all adjourned to be heard together on February 10, 2022, for two hours
7The Rule 21 motion brought by the CAS is adjourned to July 21, 2022, for a full day.
8I am not seized of any of these motions.
Morgan J.
Date: November 2, 2021