Vic Purewal

The defendant Unifund Assurance Company brought two motions: one for summary judgment under Rule 20 based on a deemed admission, and another under Rule 21 to strike the plaintiff's personal injury claim on grounds of issue estoppel.

The Rule 20 motion argued that the plaintiff's failure to respond to a request to admit, concerning his presence in the vehicle at the time of the accident, constituted a deemed admission.

The Rule 21 motion asserted that the issue of the plaintiff's occupancy had been finally determined against him in a prior FSCO arbitration, thus precluding relitigation.

The court dismissed both motions, finding that the deemed admission was of limited value due to drafting inaccuracies and that, despite the preconditions for issue estoppel being met, applying the doctrine would be unfair given the significant differences in purpose, process, and stakes between the FSCO arbitration and the tort claim.

The plaintiff sought to add Pave-Tar Construction Ltd. as a defendant after the expiry of the putative limitation period, arguing that the claim was not discovered until the City of Toronto disclosed Pave-Tar's winter maintenance contract.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate reasonable diligence in discovering the identity and role of Pave-Tar within the two-year limitation period, as no evidence was provided to explain the delay in inquiry.