Sean F. Dunphy

The accused brought an application under s. 11(b) of the Charter seeking a stay of proceedings due to unreasonable delay.

The projected delay from arrest to the end of the trial was 39.5 months, exceeding the 30-month presumptive ceiling established in Jordan.

The court found that the delay was primarily attributable to the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused significant court closures and systemic backlogs.

The application for a stay of proceedings was dismissed.

Following the dismissal of the defendants' motions for summary judgment, the court determined the costs payable to the successful plaintiff.

The plaintiff sought substantial indemnity costs based on an unaccepted offer to settle the motions.

The court declined to award substantial indemnity costs, noting that Rule 49.10 does not provide a responding party much incentive to make an offer to settle in advance of a motion.

The court fixed the plaintiff's costs on a partial indemnity basis at $38,328, inclusive of fees, disbursements, and HST, to be paid equally by the three moving party groups.

The offender, an 18-year-old first-time offender, was convicted of arson after participating in the deliberate burning of a stolen pickup truck using gasoline in a dense residential complex.

The Crown sought a net sentence of nine months' custody, while the defence sought time served or a conditional sentence.

The court emphasized denunciation and deterrence for serious arson offences, declining a conditional sentence.

The offender was sentenced to seven months' net custody followed by two years of probation.

Following a jury trial where the defendants were convicted of kidnapping and other offences, the Crown sought a Gardiner ruling to establish that a firearm was used during the commission of the offences.

The court reviewed the evidence, including victim testimony, photographs of injuries, and security footage.

The court found beyond a reasonable doubt that an operative firearm was used by a co-perpetrator to threaten and assault the victim during the kidnapping, robbery, aggravated assault, and uttering of death threats.

This finding triggers mandatory minimum sentencing provisions under the Criminal Code.

The defendant, Jordan Cann, brought an application under s. 11(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, seeking a stay of proceedings due to unreasonable delay.

The total delay from arrest to projected trial end was 36 months, exceeding the 30-month presumptive ceiling established in R. v. Jordan.

The court analyzed periods of delay, attributing significant portions to exceptional circumstances, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic (204 days in 2020 and 109 days in 2021) and the unforeseen unavailability of a complainant for the preliminary inquiry (66 days in 2021).

The court found that these exceptional circumstances, when deducted, brought the net delay well within the Jordan framework.

Consequently, the application was dismissed.

Mr. Hoang was sentenced following convictions for five counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking (heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, cocaine), two counts of possession of proceeds of crime, and two counts of unsafe storage of a firearm and ammunition.

The court considered aggravating factors including the large quantities of highly toxic opioids, the presence of a firearm, and admitted prior uncharged trafficking offences.

Mitigating factors included his first-time offender status and pro-social network.

The court imposed an 18-year global sentence for the most serious trafficking offences, with other sentences running concurrently, and ordered a half-parole eligibility delay, forfeiture of cash and vehicle, a fine, DNA sample, and firearms prohibition.

The appellant, Donnovan Junior McLean, appealed his convictions for assaulting his pregnant wife and her 14-year-old son with a weapon, as well as his sentence.

The trial judge had convicted him and sentenced him to 60 days intermittent imprisonment plus probation.

The appeal grounds for conviction included alleged errors in assessing self-defence, relying on an unproved prior statement, and relying on a theory of injuries not advanced by the defence.

The court found no material misapprehension of evidence by the trial judge and upheld her credibility findings.

The appeal against sentence was also dismissed, as the trial judge properly considered aggravating factors (domestic assault, assault on a young person in a position of trust) and the parity principle, finding the sentence appropriate and at the low end of the range.

This was a motion for default judgment by the Bank of Montreal against a corporate borrower and its principal, who acted as a guarantor, for outstanding debts under three credit facilities.

The court confirmed the amounts owed by the borrower and addressed the guarantor's limited liability under two personal guarantees.

The judge clarified that enforcement costs of the underlying loans were subject to the guarantee caps, while costs of enforcing the guarantees themselves were not.

The court assessed partial indemnity costs for the guarantor's claim and full indemnity costs for the borrower's claim, adjusting the Bank's requested costs due to overreach in its motion.

Following the dismissal of the applicant's estate claim, the court assessed costs.

The applicant, a self-represented litigant, was found to have been driven by spite and animus, which unnecessarily complicated and prolonged the proceedings.

The respondents had made two offers to settle.

Considering the applicant's conduct and the settlement offers, the court awarded the respondents substantial indemnity costs fixed at $60,000.

The accused was tried on multiple counts of possession of controlled substances for the purpose of trafficking, possession of proceeds of crime, and unsafe storage of a firearm.

Police surveillance and searches of the accused's vehicles and home revealed large quantities of narcotics, including heroin, cocaine, and carfentanil, hidden in a secret vehicle compartment and other containers, along with over $250,000 in cash and a loaded shotgun.

The accused claimed to be a mere delivery person unaware of the narcotics or the firearm.

The court rejected the accused's testimony as fabricated, finding overwhelming circumstantial evidence of his central role in a wholesale trafficking operation.

The accused was found guilty on all counts except three drug possession counts related to untested substances found in his home.

This was a joint application by the defendants for relief under sections 8 and 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, seeking a declaration that searches conducted under two warrants breached their rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

The application challenged the validity of the warrants and the police conduct in obtaining consent for information.

The court dismissed the application, finding no Charter breach and that the warrants were properly issued based on the Information to Obtain (ITO).

The three co-accused applicants brought a pre-trial motion challenging the validity of a search warrant that led to the seizure of firearms and drugs.

The Crown asserted Confidential Informant privilege over portions of the Information to Obtain (ITO) and provided a redacted version along with a proposed judicial summary.

In this Step 6 Garofoli ruling, the court held that the proposed judicial summary sufficiently alerted the defence to the nature of the redacted information, allowing them to challenge the warrant by argument or evidence.

The Crown was permitted to rely on the unredacted ITO to support the issuance of the warrant.

Following the dismissal of the plaintiff's motion for an injunction, the parties were unable to agree on costs.

The defendants sought substantial indemnity costs of $35,000, citing the plaintiff's uncooperative conduct and failure to produce affiants for cross-examination despite a court-ordered timetable.

The court awarded the defendants their costs on a substantial indemnity scale fixed at $35,000, finding the plaintiff's lack of cooperation glaring.

The court declined to order the plaintiff's principal personally liable for the costs, noting that the defendants' corporate remedies as minority shareholders remained to be decided.

The appellant appealed two decisions of the Consent and Capacity Board confirming a Community Treatment Order and upholding a finding of incapacity to consent to treatment with antipsychotic medications.

The Superior Court of Justice applied the palpable and overriding error standard of review to the Board's factual findings.

The court found ample evidence supporting the Board's conclusions that the appellant lacked sufficient insight to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his treatment decisions and that he would suffer substantial deterioration without the CTO.

The appeals were dismissed.

Following a decision declaring the respondent a vexatious litigant and staying his underlying civil claims as an abuse of process, the court determined the scale and quantum of costs.

The court awarded full indemnity costs to both groups of applicants for both the applications and the underlying civil actions, citing the respondent's extreme, baseless claims and his well-funded, obsessive litigation campaign.

Costs were fixed at $53,175.37 for the Flores applicants and $195,970.46 for the JFCY applicants.

The applicants, including a legal clinic and family friends, brought applications under s. 140 of the Courts of Justice Act to have the respondent declared a vexatious litigant.

The respondent had engaged in years of relentless litigation across multiple jurisdictions following his teenage daughter's decision to withdraw from his custody, repeatedly alleging abduction, fraud, and conspiracy against anyone involved.

The court found that the respondent persistently and without reasonable grounds instituted vexatious proceedings and conducted them in a vexatious manner, continually attempting to re-litigate issues already decided against him.

The applications were granted, the respondent was declared a vexatious litigant, and he was prohibited from instituting or continuing related proceedings without leave of the court.

The applicant sought to set aside transactions that made the respondents joint tenants of her deceased father's home, and to declare his 1995 will invalid, alleging he lacked English comprehension and was subject to undue influence.

The court found the deceased had testamentary capacity, understood English sufficiently to make his will and execute the transfers, and acted free from coercion.

The application was dismissed with costs, and the Certificate of Pending Litigation was dissolved.

The defendants brought a motion for an anti-suit injunction to prevent the plaintiffs from continuing a newly commenced Superior Court action, a Federal Court copyright action, and any future related proceedings worldwide.

The underlying dispute involved a documentary about the making of the plaintiffs' film.

The court stayed the new Superior Court action as an abuse of process, finding it was a collateral attack on previous final judgments.

However, the court declined to issue a broad anti-suit injunction or stay the Federal Court action, deferring to the Federal Court to determine issues of res judicata and issue estoppel within its own jurisdiction.

The applicant client sought to schedule a hearing before a judge to assess accounts rendered by his former lawyer.

The contingency fee agreement had previously been declared unenforceable by another judge, who ordered a reference for assessment.

The court held that because the contingency fee agreement was unenforceable, the assessment must proceed in the normal manner before an assessment officer, not a judge.

The application to schedule a hearing before a judge was dismissed.

The applicant homebuilder abandoned its application against the respondent warranty corporation shortly before the scheduled hearing, after the respondent had incurred significant costs preparing its defence.

The respondent sought costs on a substantial indemnity scale, arguing the applicant unreasonably delayed abandoning the flawed application after an earlier injunction was dismissed.

The court agreed, finding the applicant's conduct in forcing the respondent to actively defend a doomed application warranted sanction.

Costs were fixed at $72,500 on a substantial indemnity scale.