Articles 2021

Minor amendment of consolidated practice direction concerning the Estates List in the Toronto Region

The last Ontario Estates Bench-Bar Liaison Committee meeting before the summer was held on April 15th. Topics of discussion during this meeting included applications to dispense with a bond, deadlines for notice of withdrawal of objections and request for increased costs, the process for dealing with errors in probate application, changes to the Succession Law Reform Act, Toronto Estates Office scheduling, court bookings and more.

September marked the beginning of a new term for the Ontario Bar Association. With the new term comes a new series of Brown Bag Lunch meetings for the Trusts and Estates Law Section. This month's meeting addressed requests by banks to validate Powers of Attorney and the First Time Home Savings Account. The next Brown Bag Lunches will be held on October 15 and November 19, 2024.

The final Brown Bag Lunch meeting for the 2024-2025 term was held on June 18, 2024. As usual, participants raised interesting discussion topics and generously shared their thoughts with other attendees. Some of the topics discussed this month include claims related to registered plans and disabled beneficiaries, the administration of the estate of an international student, and the transfer of the ownership of an RDSP.

On a beautiful day in May, members of the OBA’s Trusts and Estates Law Section gathered for the monthly Brown Bag Lunch, where they discussed several interesting and topical matters relating to their practices (including administration matters involving the OCL, supporting materials for motions to dispense with a bond, allocation of income from Graduated Rate Estates among others).

Following are our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of September 30, 2024.

This article summarizes Longair v. Akumin Inc. et al., 2024 ONSC 3675 where the Ontario Superior Court of Justice grants a number of secondary market misrepresentation claims leave to proceed under Part XXIII.1 of the Securities Act and certifies a global class.

This article outlines the background, and the key concepts decided by Federal Court and Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) in the investigation by the Office of Privacy Commissioner of Canada into Facebook's practices. The FCA concluded that Facebook failed to obtain meaningful consent from friends of users to disclose their data and breached its safeguarding obligations by failing to adequately monitor and enforce the privacy practices of third-party applications operating on the platform.

As defence counsel, we are always dealing with what can be deducted from any settlement and award and the recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court provides some direction on the deductibility of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) in a motor vehicle accident.