The Ontario Court of Appeal handed down two seminal decisions last month. In the companion cases, Cobb v. Long Estate and El-Khodr v. Lackie,  the Court of Appeal (hopefully) settled the doctrine in a number of areas relevant to motor vehicle accident (“MVA”) litigation. Cobb and El-Khodr were appeals arising from the assessment damages, prejudgment interest, and costs in the context ...

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly said that, in interpreting statutes, courts should undertake a unified textual, contextual and purposive approach. Under this approach “the words of an Act are to be read in their entire context and in their grammatical and ordinary sense harmoniously with the scheme of the Act, the object of the Act, and the intention ...

If laws are supposed to be legislated by the legislature, and interpreted by the judiciary, what happens when the judiciary is of the view that the legislature is dropping the ball? This philosophical conundrum was implicitly considered by two different levels of court in Ontario, with different results. In Ernst & Young Inc. v. Chartis Insurance Co. of Canada, [2014] ...

In a recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, R. v. Jacques, Justice Lauwers correctly applied the law despite his understandable reservations about the outcome. Mr. Jacques had been convicted before the Provincial Offences Court on two counts of driving without automobile insurance and one count of driving with a suspended license. His convictions were upheld on appeal before the Ontario ...

Kassburg v. Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, 2014 ONCA 922, is an Ontario Court of Appeal decision that was released without much fanfare due to the timing of the release (December 29, 2014, right in the middle of the holiday season).   Kassburg is worthy of comment, if only for the reason that it is one of the latest ...