Ontario Court Of Appeal Summaries (December 17 – 21, 2018)

Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario released this past week. The Court released a great number of decisions this week, some of them quite lengthy.

In Das v George Weston Limited, the Court of Appeal upheld a decision of Justice Perrell in which His Honour had dismissed as disclosing no reasonable cause of action a $2 billion class action against Loblaws in relation to the tragic 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh. That collapse killed or seriously injured over 3,600 people, many of whom worked for Loblaws' suppliers of its Joe Fresh clothing line.

The Court held that the claims were governed by the laws of Bangladesh and that, as a result, most of the claims were statute-barred as a result of Bangladesh's Limitations Act, 1908. Furthermore, the Court held that it was "plain and obvious" that the claims that were not statute-barred would fail under Bangladeshi and English tort law. Loblaws, as merely a customer of the garment manufacturers who carried on business in Rana Plaza, simply did not owe a duty to the victims.

In Paulus v Fleury, the Court set aside the motion judge's decision which had rescinded a settlement agreement in an MVA case on the basis of alleged misrepresentations made by opposing counsel at the pretrial. The Court determined that the representations made were not fraudulent and commented on the duties of counsel in making submissions on behalf of their clients.

Other topics covered this week included family law (varying 27 year old final support orders, striking pleadings for failure to disclose financial information and the extent of permission to participate in the trial when one's answer is struck), adverse possession, specific performance of an option to repurchase land, forfeiture of a deposit paid under an agreement of purchase and sale of land, the interpretation of a continuous use clause in a commercial lease and striking pleadings. We also summarized another provincial offences matter this week, as it is relevant to anyone who will ever get a speeding ticket. The Crown is now obligated to provide, by way of disclosure, the user's manual to the radar gun. The Crown opposed having to provide individual disclosure to every defendant, citing its policy of making the manuals available for inspection a the Crown's office and circulating copies to the paralegals who regularly try speeding tickets in the Provincial Courts. The Court said those efforts were not enough to satisfy the Crown's disclosure obligation.

Table of Contents

Civil Decisions

Das v. George Weston Limited, 2018 ONCA 1053

Keywords: Torts, Negligence, Vicarious Liability, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Civil Procedure, Class Proceedings, Striking Pleadings, No Reasonable Cause of Action, Expert Evidence, Foreign Law, Lex Loci Delicti, Standard of Review, Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 21.01(1)(a), r. 21.01(1)(b), Lister v. McAnulty, [1944] S.C.R. 317, General Motors Acceptance Corporation of Canada, Limited v. Town and Country Chrysler Limited, Motion to Strike, Castrillo v. Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, 2017 ONCA 121, 136 O.R. (3d) 654, R. v. Imperial Tobacco, 2011 SCC 42, [2011] 3 S.C.R. 45, Reasonable Prospect of Success, Tolofson v. Jensen, [1994] 3 S.C.R. 1022

Canadian Civil Liberties Association v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 ONCA 1038

Keywords: Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Judicial Review, Criminal Law, Orders, Declarations of Constitutional Invalidity, Corrections and Conditional Release Act, S.C. 1992, c. 20, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Corporation of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association v. Her Majesty the Queen, 2017 ONSC 7491

Gionet v. Pingue, 2018 ONCA 1040

Keywords: Family Law, Property, Presumption of Resulting Trust, Equalization of Net Family Property, Unequal Division of Property, Civil Procedure, Trials...