Thomas

The Crown brought an application to designate the respondent a Dangerous Offender following his conviction for aggravated assault.

The respondent had brutally attacked the victim with a hammer, causing catastrophic and permanent injuries.

The court reviewed the respondent's extensive criminal record, history of substance abuse, and diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder and delusional disorder.

Applying the two-stage framework, the court found the respondent met the criteria for a Dangerous Offender designation due to his intractable pattern of violent behaviour.

Concluding there was no reasonable expectation that a lesser measure would adequately protect the public, the court imposed an indeterminate penitentiary sentence.

The applicant sought sanctions for civil contempt against the respondent church and its pastors for repeatedly breaching a restraining order that enforced COVID-19 public health gathering limits.

The court found the respondents in contempt for holding large indoor religious services in defiance of the order.

Applying the factors for civil contempt sentencing, the court imposed fines of $35,000 on the church, $10,000 on the lead pastor, and $3,000 on the assistant pastor.

The court also ordered the church doors to be locked until gathering limits were eased to permit 30 percent capacity, and awarded $69,000 in partial indemnity costs to the applicant.

The accused was charged with second degree murder after brutally beating a 75-year-old woman on a walking trail.

The accused admitted to causing the victim's death but argued he lacked the requisite intent due to extreme intoxication from consuming magic mushrooms and marijuana.

The court rejected the defence of non-mental disorder automatism, finding no psychiatric evidence to support it.

The court concluded that the accused's coordinated actions before, during, and after the attack, along with the targeted and severe nature of the blows, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to cause bodily harm that he knew was likely to cause death and was reckless as to whether death ensued.

The accused was found guilty of second degree murder.

The applicants sought to rectify the title of the respondents' property to reinstate an easement that provided the only access to their landlocked parcel.

The Land Registry Office had inadvertently deleted the easement from the servient tenement's parcel register in 2005.

The Deputy Director of Titles had previously ordered the easement deleted.

The Superior Court, hearing the matter as a new trial under section 26 of the Land Titles Act, found that the easement was deleted in error and could not be extinguished without an express release.

The court ordered the register rectified to reinstate the easement.

The defendant, the Attorney General of Canada, brought a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the plaintiff's action for negligent investigation and malicious prosecution.

The plaintiff, a legal assistant, had been previously acquitted of immigration fraud charges following an undercover RCMP investigation, while her employer was convicted.

The court found that the police had reasonable and probable grounds to arrest and prosecute the plaintiff based on intercepted communications and her involvement in fabricating a refugee claim.

As reasonable and probable grounds existed, both the negligent investigation and malicious prosecution claims failed.

The motion for summary judgment was granted and the action was dismissed.

The defence brought an application to admit expert testimony from a psychotherapist on the issue of traumatic grief, specifically to explain the accused's conduct in discarding his murdered wife's poetry as a coping mechanism.

The Crown opposed the admission.

The court analyzed the necessity criterion under the Mohan framework for expert evidence.

The application was dismissed, with the court finding that the trier of fact possesses the requisite experience and knowledge to understand that grieving individuals may react in unpredictable ways, rendering the expert assistance unnecessary.