Sheila Ruth Block

The defendant brought a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the plaintiff's claim that it held a perpetual and exclusive right to own, operate, and collect tolls from a viable international border crossing in the vicinity of the Ambassador Bridge.

The plaintiff sought declarations of rights granted under the Canadian Transit Company Act and, alternatively, compensation for infringement and expropriation.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the interpretation of the statutory franchise rights granted under the CTC Act, including whether implicit rights of exclusivity were conferred, raised a genuine issue requiring trial.

The appellant, Gerald Sternberg, appealed the dismissal of his action against Cresford Capital Corporation, seeking payment as a guarantor for a vendor take-back mortgage.

Sternberg had sold land to Cresford, which then assigned the agreement and mortgage to a single-purpose corporation that defaulted.

Cresford's name appeared as guarantor on the electronic mortgage registration, but Cresford argued this was an error and that no guarantee agreement existed.

The motion judge granted summary judgment to Cresford, finding no guarantee agreement.

The Court of Appeal upheld this decision, affirming that the motion judge correctly interpreted the agreements and that the electronic registration was an error inconsistent with the parties' bargain.

The Court emphasized the high standard of deference to the motion judge's contractual interpretation and found no reversible error.

The appellant sought leave to file a reply factum in an appeal, asserting that the respondent's factum introduced new issues, specifically regarding whether a secondary argument was properly raised on appeal and the applicability of the doctrine of merger.

The court found that new issues were indeed raised by the respondent and granted the appellant leave to file a reply factum, while denying the respondent the right to file a sur-reply factum.

Costs for the motion were reserved to the panel hearing the appeal.

The appellants, several local governments, appealed the dismissal of their application for declarations and injunctions against Canadian National Railway Company (CN) regarding the construction of an intermodal hub.

The appellants sought to compel CN to comply with over 65 provincial and municipal laws.

The application judge dismissed the application, finding that the majority of the claims lacked a factual foundation and were premature, and that the three specific bylaws at issue impaired the core of the federal railway undertaking under the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity.

The Court of Appeal upheld the decision, confirming that the construction and operation of the intermodal hub is a vital part of a federal railway undertaking and that the municipal bylaws requiring official plan amendments impaired this core federal power.

The appeal and the application for leave to appeal costs were dismissed.

The appellant infringed a patent held by the respondents for metallocene linear low-density polyethylenes (thin but strong plastics).

Following a liability finding, a reference judge awarded the respondents an accounting of profits equal to the appellant's actual revenue minus actual full costs, and also awarded springboard profits — profits earned post-patent-expiry causally attributable to infringement during the patent period.

The majority dismissed the appeal, holding that an accounting of profits requires disgorgement of all profits causally attributable to the invention using a three-step framework; the appellant's concession that no non-infringing option existed precluded reduction of the award; and springboard profits are legally permissible and factually supported.

Côté J. dissented, arguing the differential profit approach should have been available and the matter remitted to the Federal Court.

The respondent requested a correction to a costs endorsement, noting the judge had mistakenly written the fee total instead of the all-inclusive total of fees, taxes, and disbursements.

The applicants objected, arguing the endorsement was clear and the issue should be raised on cross-appeal since an appeal had already been commenced.

The court corrected the transposition error, amending the costs award to the intended all-inclusive amount of $2,288,314.57, noting the Court of Appeal would prefer the corrected outcome over a cross-appeal about a typo.

This is a costs endorsement following the dismissal of an appeal.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario awarded all-inclusive costs of $200,000 to the successful respondent, Ontario First Nations (2008) Limited Partnership, against the appellants, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Her Majesty the Queen in right of Ontario.

The decision considered that this was the second level of appeal, the issues involved, and the respondent's success.

This is an appeal from a Superior Court decision upholding an arbitration award.

The arbitration panel found that Ontario and OLG breached a Gaming Revenue Sharing and Financial Agreement with the First Nations Partnership by unilaterally stopping payments of non-gaming revenue and complimentary services ("Comps") after outsourcing non-gaming amenities.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeals, affirming the lower court's decision that the Agreement was breached and the damages awarded were appropriate.

The court declined to rule on the standard of review for commercial arbitration decisions post-Vavilov, finding the outcome would be the same under either standard, and also declined to address the "honour of the Crown" doctrine as it was not determinative.

A copyright collective society sought to enforce an interim tariff against a university that had refused to continue as a licensee, while the university counterclaimed for a declaration that its fair dealing guidelines protected its copying activities.

The Court held that Board-approved tariffs are not mandatory against users who choose not to be licensed, as the relevant statutory provision only gives a collective society the right to collect defaulted payments from voluntary licensees.

Because the tariff was unenforceable, there was no live dispute to ground the university's request for declaratory relief on fair dealing.

The Court nonetheless identified significant errors in the lower courts' fair dealing analysis, which wrongly focused exclusively on the institutional perspective rather than the perspective of the students as the ultimate users.

This costs endorsement followed successful appeals by the Fram and Kerbel entities against Romandale Farms Limited.

Romandale had initially been awarded substantial indemnity costs for four intertwined actions tried together.

The Court of Appeal, applying the principle of overall success rather than issue-by-issue determination, found that Fram and Kerbel were entitled to partial indemnity costs for the original actions, having achieved overall success on appeal and having beaten a joint settlement offer.

The appellants, Fram and Kerbel, appealed a trial judgment that declared a 2005 land sale agreement between Kerbel and Romandale at an end.

The trial judge had found that Kerbel repudiated the agreement by entering into a settlement agreement with Fram that delayed the closing of the land sale until after secondary plan approval.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeals, finding that Romandale was estopped by convention from asserting that the settlement agreement breached the 2005 agreement, as all parties had shared the assumption that the sale could only close after secondary plan approval.

The Court also held that the 2005 agreement was not frustrated or void for mistake, Kerbel's claim was not limitation-barred, and Kerbel was entitled to specific performance because the lands were unique.

The appellants, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Ontario, appealed an arbitration decision that found they breached the Gaming Revenue Sharing and Financial Agreement (GRSFA) by ceasing to share certain non-gaming and complimentary revenues with the respondent, Ontario First Nations (2008) Limited Partnership.

The Superior Court of Justice dismissed the appeal, holding that the standard of review for commercial arbitrations remains reasonableness post-Vavilov.

The court found the arbitration panel's contractual interpretation was reasonable, firmly rooted in the agreement's text and surrounding circumstances, and that the honour of the Crown doctrine was correctly applied to the government-to-government agreement.

The victim of an assault sought leave to intervene in a Crown appeal of a disposition by the Ontario Review Board regarding the accused, who had been found not criminally responsible.

The victim sought to argue for a geographic boundary restriction, an issue the Crown had raised unsuccessfully at the board but did not appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, holding that permitting the victim to intervene would unfairly prejudice the accused by raising an issue not raised by the parties.

The court noted that the victim's concerns had been articulated by the Crown, whose responsibility it is to speak for the community regarding public safety.

The appellant, a federally-regulated Crown corporation, appealed a Federal Court of Appeal decision reinstating a Health and Safety Officer's direction that the employer had contravened s. 125(1)(z.12) of the Canada Labour Code by failing to ensure that workplace safety inspections covered letter carrier routes and points of call beyond the physical depot building.

The appeals officer had concluded that the statutory inspection obligation applied only to workplaces the employer physically controls, and the Federal Court upheld that decision.

The majority of the Supreme Court applied the Vavilov framework for reasonableness review and held that the appeals officer's interpretation — confining the inspection duty to employer-controlled premises — was reasonable, internally coherent, and defensible in light of the text, context and purpose of the provision.

The appeal was allowed and the appeals officer's order was restored.

Following a motion for directions where the court ordered that the corporate respondent not pay the personal respondents' legal fees for their appeal of a winding-up order, the court determined costs.

The applicant sought costs of $4,500 on a partial indemnity basis.

The respondents failed to provide written submissions.

The court awarded the requested $4,500 to the applicant, ordering that it be paid jointly and severally by the personal respondents, as their conduct in breaching a stay order necessitated the motion.

Her Majesty the Queen in right of Ontario sought to lift a stay on its $330 billion health care cost recovery action against three tobacco companies (JTI-Macdonald Corp., Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc.) and eleven co-defendants, which was imposed under CCAA proceedings.

Ontario proposed to temporarily stay the effects of any judgment.

The court dismissed the motion, emphasizing the need to preserve the status quo in CCAA proceedings to facilitate a global resolution of significant claims.

Allowing Ontario's action to proceed would alter the level playing field, distract from restructuring efforts, and impose significant costs, prejudicing other stakeholders.

Following the dismissal of the appellants' appeal from an order liquidating the corporate defendant, the respondent sought costs of the appeal and a prior stay motion.

The Divisional Court fixed costs at $25,000 on a partial indemnity basis, payable solely by the personal appellants to prevent the respondent from effectively paying half of his own costs through the corporation.

The court also ordered the personal appellants to fully indemnify the respondent and the corporation for the fees of a monitor appointed during the stay, as the monitor was necessitated by the personal appellants' oppressive conduct.

The court-appointed monitor sought directions on whether Di Battista Gambin Developments Limited (DBG) should pay the legal fees incurred by the Di Battista respondents for their appeal of a winding-up order.

The court found that the appeal was solely for the benefit of the individual Di Battista respondents, whose conduct had been found oppressive, and not for the mutual benefit or ordinary course of DBG's business.

Therefore, DBG should not fund the appeal costs, and the Di Battista respondents were ordered to repay any legal fees already paid by DBG.

The appellants appealed a motions judge's decision ordering the liquidation of a closely-held corporation as a remedy for oppression and breach of fiduciary duty.

The appellants argued that the remedies of disgorgement and constructive trust were sufficient and that liquidation was punitive.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding that the motions judge properly exercised his discretion to order liquidation because the trust underpinning the shareholders' agreement had been destroyed, the appellants had committed grave breaches, and the business was no longer operating as originally intended.

The court also upheld the brief two-week election period granted to the appellants to purchase the respondent's shares.

The defendants sought to schedule a further motion for summary judgment on the Monopolies Act issue, having previously failed on a Rule 21 motion concerning the same claim.

The court denied the request, emphasizing that partial summary judgment is rarely appropriate in complex litigation, especially when recent amendments to pleadings have re-opened other significant issues, such as patent validity.

The judge concluded that the case should proceed to a single trial on all issues to avoid fragmented litigation and multiple appeals, which would prolong the proceedings and consume vast judicial resources.