Sunil Kapur

The plaintiff employer brought a motion for partial summary judgment seeking to enforce a non-competition clause against a former software developer who resigned to work for a competitor.

The defendants brought cross-motions seeking a declaration that the clause was void.

The court found the matter appropriate for partial summary judgment.

The court held that the non-competition clause was overly broad in its scope of prohibited activities, geographic scope, and temporal scope, and was ambiguous.

The clause was declared unreasonable, unenforceable, and void ab initio.

The Court considered an appeal arising during an indefinite strike by members of Les avocats et notaires de l’État québécois, where an adjournment request had been refused as part of an essential-services context.

By the hearing date, the strike had ended and a special statute had required a return to work.

The Court held the issue was moot and dismissed the appeal without costs.

It stated that dismissing the appeal did not endorse either the process used or the validity of the considerations identified by the Court of Appeal.

The appellant appealed two orders dismissing and adjourning its application for an interpretation of an Ontario Regulation regarding the 2008 remuneration of Justices of the Peace.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, holding that the proper mechanism to challenge the government's response to a remuneration commission's recommendation is through judicial review on a standard of rationality, not by seeking an interpretation of the implementing Regulation.

The Association of Justices of the Peace of Ontario brought an application seeking a declaration regarding the appropriate salary indexing adjustment for the 2008-2009 salary year.

The court had previously adjourned the application to allow the government time to respond to the Remuneration Commission's recommendation.

After the government provided its response, the court dismissed the application, holding that the appropriate remedy was now judicial review of the government's decision based on the standard of simple rationality.

Three employers applied for judicial review of arbitration awards that reinstated employees who had been discharged following criminal convictions for sexual assault in the workplace.

In each case, the arbitrators had allowed the unions to collaterally attack the criminal convictions and had concluded the employees were innocent.

The Divisional Court granted the applications and quashed the arbitration awards, holding that a criminal conviction cannot be collaterally attacked at a subsequent arbitration.

The doctrine of abuse of process prevents an arbitrator from retrying a criminal case and treating a conviction as merely prima facie evidence.

In a labour appeal from a Divisional Court order quashing an arbitration award, the appellant union argued that the arbitration board had adequately resolved the retroactivity issue arising from the repeal of a statutory provision governing appointment to a provincial schools authority.

The majority of the Court of Appeal held that determination of retroactivity was essential to disposition of the grievance and that the board failed to address all relevant considerations.

The appeal was therefore dismissed and the matter remained remitted to the board for redetermination of retroactivity.

A dissent would have found the board's reasons, read as a whole, sufficient to decide the issue and would have reinstated the award.

The applicant sought judicial review of an Ontario Labour Relations Board decision that included secretaries to judges in a union bargaining unit.

The Divisional Court quashed the Board's decision, holding that the Board erred in its interpretation of judicial independence.

The majority found that including judicial secretaries in the bargaining unit created an inevitable conflict of interest, as they are integral to the administrative independence and confidential functions of the judiciary.