Articles 2019

In a recent decision from Saskatchewan, the Court was asked by the representative plaintiffs in a proposed class action arising from the Humboldt Broncos bus crash to stay an individual action brought by family members of those killed in the tragedy. The Court granted the stay pending the April 2022 Certification hearing, effectively turning access to justice on its head. By depriving individual plaintiffs of control over their litigation, access to justice is both delayed and denied.

In Azar v Strada Crush, Justice Morgan comments on a representative plaintiff’s potential exposure to adverse cost awards, and the importance of having an indemnity for costs in place for the representative plaintiff, whether that is addressed in the retainer agreement by class counsel agreeing to indemnify the representative plaintiff, or by securing a third party indemnity for costs from the Class Proceedings Fund or a third-party funding company.

In Del Giudice v Thompson, Perell J. provided valuable guidance to the class action bar regarding pre-certification communications with putative class members. This article reviews how the law in Ontario has developed and suggest that this decision—and in particular, Perell J.’s postface—offers a promising path forward.

With its recent decision in Desjardins Financial Services Firm Inc v Asselin, the Supreme Court of Canada highlighted and galvanized the suddenly stark jurisdictional differences between Canadian provinces, finding that, even as Ontario has taken legislative steps to raise the standard for class action certification, the existing law in Québec is to be interpreted on the loosest possible standard, short of authorizing frivolous claims.

It has been nearly nine years since the Ontario Court of Appeal’s unpaid overtime class action certification trilogy was released, settling the law regarding certification of unpaid overtime and employment misclassification class actions. With the benefit of the intervening years, what can be said now about the state of employment class actions in Ontario?

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently ruled that systemic negligence claims against governments are indeed a tenable avenue for class-wide recovery. While the decision in Francis v. Ontario is the third time in two years that the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled solitary confinement is unconstitutional, it was the first time a Canadian appellate court made an aggregate damages award for systemic negligence in the context of a judgment.

In Price v. Smith & Wesson Corp., 2021 ONSC 1114, the Court provides an important reminder of the ongoing importance of historical case law to solve modern negligence problems. Despite the evolution of tort law since its early days, the starting point of Donoghue v. Stephenson remains relevant even outside the confines of the classroom, particularly with regard to ejusdem generis, or dangerous goods per se.

Courts in Ontario and Alberta have recently issued several significant decisions in privacy class actions. These two decisions followed the prevailing trend of the dismissal of privacy class actions in Canada, in which courts have generally found that there is no evidence of harm, or that the information at issue did not rise to a level that would support the finding of a reasonable expectation of privacy, or both.

The new legislative requirement that common issues “predominate” over individual issues in order to certify a class action will serve to intensify attention on potential individual issues at certification. Although Ontario has little judicial authority on individual issues litigation, the authority to date shows that individual issues litigation can be structured to ensure that individual questions will be determined in accessible and effective ways, even in large, complex proceedings.

A recent unanimous decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Kaynes v. BP p.l.c. provides welcome guidance to the class actions bar, as it confirms the circumstances in which an early-stage Rule 21 motion to challenge a statute-barred claim may be appropriate, and clarifies when a claim for fraudulent misrepresentation is discoverable under the Limitations Act.