Articles

The recent article about the Ontario court decision of Premform v Heights Rental, highlights lessons learned when making decisions to exclude certain documents during the discovery process. The failure to comply with discovery obligations may land your client in a predicament before trial, needing the court's permission to rely on the late produced document, and cost consequences.

Can the construction lien and adjudication regimes co-exist in Ontario and work seamlessly, in harmony together? This article explores certain unintended pitfalls, shortcomings, and incongruencies associated with combining the regimes, as illustrated in the wording of the statute itself as well as in recent case law on adjudication.

Three years into the Interim Adjudication process under Part II.1 of the Construction Act, it is apparent that what was promised as a quick and dirty approach to dispute resolution is turning into a fly-by-night process that creates more problems than solutions. In this article, the author shares his thoughts on some of these problems.

The article addresses a repeating “urban legend” that there is no value to using CCDC contracts, and reinforces why the uniquely Canadian system is not only fair but eliminates a great deal of confusion and problems for all parties concerned.

This article explores two of the most common construction contract formats in Ontario, the CCDC 2 – Stipulated Price Contract and the CCDC 5A Construction Management Contract – For Services, and identifies some of the similarities and differences between these project delivery models.

A summary of the event hosted by the OBA's Construction and Infrastructure Law Section on January 19, 2023.

Referral of lien actions to the Small Claims Court is a new process that is now available to the parties if the lien action is for an amount that is within the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court. The author created this very useful step-by-step guide that describes the transition of a lien action from the Superior Court of Justice to the Small Claims Court once the matter is referred to the Small Claims Court Deputy Judge.

In this article, the author discusses the Divisional Court’s confirmation that adjudicators can determine their own jurisdiction, and the Court’s discussion on whether abandoning or terminating a contract means the contract has “ceased to exist."

The author reviews how the Court of Appeal's recent decision in Breen v. Lake of Bays (Township) creates a cautionary warning to municipalities that issue building permits without conducting final inspections on buildings and the effects that this decision will have on future matters.

This article discusses three recent Ontario court cases in the developing area of Construction Act adjudications, as well as some unanswered questions and lessons learned from the cases and the authors’ own experiences with adjudications so far.