Wendy M. Matheson

The plaintiffs, representing a class of Barbados participating policyholders, brought an action against Manulife following the transfer of their policies to Life of Barbados (LOB) in 1996 and Manulife's subsequent demutualization in 1999.

The plaintiffs claimed that Manulife owed them a duty of care and a fiduciary duty to protect their rights to participate in the demutualization.

The court found that while it was reasonably foreseeable that Manulife would demutualize, no duty of care or fiduciary duty was owed to the plaintiffs because their rights as policyholders were lawfully extinguished by the transfer agreement, which was approved by regulators in Barbados and Canada.

The action was dismissed.

Following an appeal where the appellants achieved substantial but not total success, the Court of Appeal for Ontario issued a costs endorsement.

The appellants did not seek costs, and the court determined the respondents were not entitled to costs.

Consequently, the court made no order as to costs.

The appellants, life insurance companies, appealed a trial judgment finding that transactions involving their participating accounts to finance a corporate acquisition breached the Insurance Companies Act.

The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's findings that the transactions breached the Act by failing to comply with generally accepted accounting principles, improperly allocating expenses, and constituting prohibited transfers.

However, the Court allowed the appeal in part regarding the remedy, finding that the trial judge's order to return $390 million to the participating accounts via litigation trusts was overly broad and akin to an oppression remedy not available under the Act.

Instead, the Court ordered the transactions unwound as of the present, with adjustments for expense savings already received.

The defendant insurer appealed an order requiring it to produce its entire claims file from a prior, settled coverage action in a subsequent bad faith action brought by the plaintiff.

The motions judge had found that the defendant impliedly waived privilege by pleading good faith.

The Divisional Court allowed the appeal, applying the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Blank v. Canada.

The Court held that litigation privilege continues in closely related subsequent litigation and that pleading good faith does not constitute a waiver.

The blanket production order was set aside, and the defendant was ordered to deliver an Affidavit of Documents individually listing the documents over which privilege is claimed.

The appellant, a freelance author, wrote articles published in The Globe and Mail.

The newspaper subsequently placed these articles in electronic databases (Info Globe Online, CPI.Q, and CD-ROM).

The appellant sued for copyright infringement.

The Court of Appeal held that the databases did not constitute a 'newspaper or similar periodical' and did not reproduce a substantial part of the newspaper's collective work.

The court also found that the oral licence granted by the appellant did not convey a proprietary interest and thus did not need to be in writing.

The appeal and cross-appeal were dismissed.

The appellants challenged the constitutionality of section 14(1) of the Public Accounting and Auditing Act, which restricted the practice of public accounting to members of the provincial institute of chartered accountants.

They argued the provision infringed their rights under sections 2(b), 6, and 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Supreme Court of Canada delivered an oral judgment dismissing the appeal, finding no restriction of those Charter rights based on its previous decisions.

The appellant, a self-employed lawyer, sought to deduct nanny wages as business expenses rather than under the capped child care deduction in the Income Tax Act.

The majority held that, although child care expenses raise difficult questions under general business-expense principles, s. 63 specifically and comprehensively addresses child care costs incurred to enable a taxpayer to carry on a business, and therefore precludes deduction under ss. 9 and 18.

The majority further held that the appellant failed to prove that s. 63 drew a distinction based on sex for the purposes of s. 15(1) of the Charter, because the evidentiary record established disproportionate social burdens of child care on women but not disproportionate payment of child care expenses.

The appeal was dismissed, with two judges dissenting on both statutory interpretation and equality analysis.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a search warrant against Sun Life Assurance Company, a provincially regulated entity, in relation to a discrimination complaint against the Bank of Montreal, a federally regulated entity.

Sun Life appealed the validity of the warrant.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, holding that the warrant was properly issued because the complaint was directed solely at the Bank of Montreal and the matter was merely investigatory, not directed at Sun Life itself.