Civil Litigation - Defendant - SCJ

The applicants, a video game company and two of its employees, brought an urgent ex parte motion for a Norwich Pharmacal order against the respondent telecommunications provider.

The employees had been subjected to severe online harassment, doxxing, and racist threats by anonymous individuals using the respondent's services.

The court granted the order without notice to the respondent, finding that the respondent's policy of notifying customers about such requests could lead to further serious harm, including 'swatting'.

The court held that the test for a Norwich order was met, as the discovery was necessary to identify the wrongdoers for potential legal or police action.

The plaintiff brought a motion for summary judgment for the repayment of a $100,000 loan.

The defendant argued the loan was unenforceable due to the involvement of his former lawyer, who allegedly arranged the loan to pay off a debt owed to the defendant and may have received secret commissions from the plaintiff.

The court found no evidence to support the defendant's speculative defenses or to implicate the plaintiff in any wrongdoing.

The court granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff, finding no genuine issue requiring a trial, and awarded full indemnity costs.

The applicants sought a prescriptive easement over a strip of the respondent's land that had been used as part of their driveway for nearly fifty years.

The court found that the applicants' predecessors in title had openly and continuously used the strip of land for parking and access from 1983 to 2003, prior to the lands being registered under the Land Titles Act.

The court concluded that the easement was reasonably necessary for the better enjoyment of the applicants' land and granted the application.

The plaintiff was injured in a motor vehicle accident when she was allegedly cut off by an unidentified black pick-up truck.

She sought a declaration that she could access the $1 million limit under her OPCF 44R Family Protection Endorsement.

The insurer argued that the independent witness's statement to the investigating police officer was inadmissible hearsay and could not satisfy the endorsement's corroboration requirement.

The court held that the corroboration requirement in the insurance contract does not strictly require admissible evidence, and the hearsay statement to the police officer provided sufficient independent indication of an unidentified vehicle's involvement to trigger coverage.

The defendant brought a motion for summary judgment based on the expiry of the limitation period just two weeks before a scheduled jury trial.

The plaintiff had suffered a concussion but argued she did not discover the cause of her symptoms until months later, after ruling out a brain tumour.

The court declined to decide the motion, finding that assessing the reasonableness of the plaintiff's discoverability required a proper evidentiary base, including cross-examinations, which was not feasible so close to trial.

The motion was adjourned to the trial judge.

The plaintiff construction manager sought an urgent hearing for an injunction to prevent the defendant union from allegedly intimidating a masonry contractor's employees into refusing to work.

The developer, Westbank, sought and was granted intervenor status.

The court declined to schedule the injunction motion on an urgent basis, finding that the delay in bringing the action was strategic and the alleged urgency was self-induced.

The parties were directed to schedule a regular motion date.

The applicant sought a declaration that its insurer had a duty to defend it in an underlying lawsuit.

The insurer argued that coverage was excluded under Exclusion 20 of the claims-made policy, which excluded claims of which the insured was aware as of the 'inception date of this Policy'.

The court found the phrase 'inception date' to be hopelessly ambiguous, as it could refer to either the initial policy issuance date or the most recent renewal date.

Applying the principles of contract interpretation, the court construed the ambiguous exclusion clause against the insurer and granted the application, ordering the insurer to provide a defence.

The defendant insurer brought a motion to dismiss the plaintiff's action against it.

The plaintiff, who was involved in a fatal collision with a pedestrian, sued his insurer for the alleged negligence of an unidentified driver.

The court found that the plaintiff failed to plead that the unidentified driver caused or contributed to his damages, having expressly pleaded that his losses were caused entirely by the pedestrian and the city.

The court dismissed the action against the insurer, as it was plain and obvious the claim could not succeed without pleading causation.

The plaintiffs brought a motion in writing and without notice seeking an order to compel the court to release the audio and video recording of a prior motion hearing to an authorized court transcriptionist.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that under the Consolidated Provincial Practice Direction, digital recordings of civil motions are not available.

The court also noted that the prior hearing involved a publication ban protecting minor defendants, and there was no justification to risk further disclosure by releasing the recording.

The defendants requested the dismissal of the plaintiff's action under Rule 2.1.01 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

The plaintiff sued the government for alleged Charter breaches arising from his treatment after immigrating as a refugee in 1957.

A previous action based on the same facts was dismissed in 2019 as statute-barred.

The court found the current action appeared duplicative and directed the registrar to issue a notice to the plaintiff to explain why the lawsuit should not be dismissed as frivolous and vexatious.

The action was stayed pending the outcome of the written hearing.

The plaintiff developer brought a motion for summary judgment for damages arising from an aborted residential real estate transaction.

The defendant purchaser argued she was entitled to revoke her offer before it was accepted and that the irrevocability clause in the standard form agreement was unconscionable.

The court held that the irrevocability clause was binding as it was supported by distinct consideration (the developer taking the property off the market).

Applying the Supreme Court's framework in Uber v. Heller, the court found that while there was unequal bargaining power, the irrevocability clause was not an improvident bargain.

Judgment was granted in favour of the plaintiff for $179,599.94.

A member of the public requested a digital recording of a hearing held on May 9, 2016, for an application involving Todd Elliott Speck and The Law Society of Upper Canada.

The court denied the request, exercising its absolute discretion.

The reasons for denial included that the hearing was public, the decision was already released and final, no oral evidence was introduced making the recording an aide memoire, the decision was based on a written record available to the public, and no persuasive reason or relevance to current proceedings was provided by the requesting party.

The applicant condominium corporation sought an urgent injunction to stop the respondents from renovating their unit and having third-party tradespeople attend the building during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The respondents requested an adjournment to seek legal counsel.

On consent, the court adjourned the application and ordered the respondents to allow no one to enter their unit until further order of the court, with exceptions for the external patio, yard, and government first-responders.

The plaintiffs sought to schedule a case conference for an assessment of damages.

The defendant was incarcerated in British Columbia and had been unreachable for several months.

The court issued a direction scheduling a telephone case conference, requesting the cooperation of the correctional institution to facilitate the defendant's participation, and noting that the conference would proceed whether the defendant participated or not.

The plaintiff buyer failed to close a real estate transaction due to an inability to secure financing.

The plaintiff attempted to renegotiate the purchase price and deposit, which the defendant sellers rejected.

The defendants subsequently sold the property to another buyer for $5,000 less and moved for summary judgment to dismiss the plaintiff's action and release the $65,000 deposit to them.

The court granted the motion, finding no bad faith, no failure to mitigate, and no grounds for relief from forfeiture, as the deposit was reasonable and there was no unconscionability.

The defendants brought a motion for security for costs under Rule 56.01(1)(d), arguing the plaintiff, a sole-purpose corporation, had insufficient exigible assets in Ontario.

The court found the defendants met the low threshold to trigger the inquiry, shifting the onus to the plaintiff.

The plaintiff failed to demonstrate sufficient exigible assets, as its bank account funds could be disbursed, and other listed assets (debt, letters of credit, water units) were not readily exigible.

The court ordered the plaintiff to post security for costs in tranches totaling $24,000 and pay $10,064.78 in costs for the motion.

The plaintiff moved to set aside a registrar's order dismissing his action for delay, nearly four years after the dismissal.

The court applied the established principles for setting aside such orders, requiring a reasonable explanation for delay, inadvertence in missing the deadline, promptness in bringing the motion, and rebuttal of prejudice.

The court found no reasonable explanation for the delay, no evidence of inadvertence by the former lawyer, and significant prejudice to the defendants due to the passage of nearly a decade since the incident, impacting witness recollection and the ability to defend.

While the motion was brought promptly after the plaintiff's new counsel discovered the dismissal, the overall delay and resulting prejudice outweighed the plaintiff's plea for indulgence, upholding the principle of finality.

The motion was dismissed.

The defendants brought a motion seeking an order to compel the plaintiff to attend a defence medical examination without the condition that the examining doctor obtain further consent for supplementary reports.

The plaintiff argued that such consent was required under the Health Care Consent Act, the Medicine Act, and the Regulated Health Professions Act, asserting that a supplementary report constituted a new report requiring fresh consent.

The court found that consent was not required, as the preparation of a supplementary report is not a "treatment" under the Health Care Consent Act.

Furthermore, Rule 33 and Section 105 of the Courts of Justice Act were deemed a complete code for court-ordered medical examinations, implying the ability to prepare supplementary reports.

The defendants' motion was granted without the plaintiff's requested condition, and the plaintiff was ordered to pay costs.

The defendant sought leave under Rule 39.02(2) to file additional evidence (articles, text messages, emails) after cross-examination, in response to the plaintiff's allegations of psychological abuse affecting the limitation period.

The court dismissed the motion, finding the evidence largely irrelevant, of slight probative value, and that the defendant failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for its late inclusion, as the abuse allegations were raised early in the proceedings.

The plaintiff brought a motion to certify a class action on behalf of approximately 7,000 door-to-door sales agents who were hired by the defendants as independent contractors.

The plaintiff alleged that the sales agents were misclassified and were actually employees entitled to benefits under the Employment Standards Act.

The court found that the plaintiff satisfied the requirements for certification under section 5(1) of the Class Proceedings Act, noting sufficient evidence of systemic commonality regarding the defendants' control over the sales agents.

The motion for certification was granted.