Articles - Focus on Franchising

The Supreme Court of Canada recently held, in its highly anticipated decision in Telus Communications Inc. v. Wellman, that business customers of Telus cannot avoid the terms of a mandatory arbitration clause by joining a class action with consumers who are not bound by the arbitration clause.

In a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, the analysis of whether an individual is considered an employee or independent contractor is given a thorough review, and brings into question the interplay of previous cases that have considered the nature of this relationship in a franchise context.

The concept of the “franchisor’s associate” is one of the vaguest concepts under Ontario franchise legislation and one of the most perilous for individuals offering franchises.

In the recent decision of Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp. v. Hydro Québec, the Supreme Court of Canada considered the scope of the duty of good faith to re-write a contract, touching upon the heightened duty that can exist in “relational contracts”, such as franchise agreements.

In PQ Licensing S.A. v. LPQ Central Canada Inc., the Ontario Court of Appeal considered whether the mandatory mediation process prescribed by a franchise agreement impacted the limitation period applicable to a franchisee’s rescission claim.  The Court found that the franchisee’s claim for rescission was not barred even though the franchisee had delivered its notice of rescission nearly a decade prior.

Topics covered this week included franchise law and rescission, liability for wrongful patent enforcement, the duty to defend in the MVA context, family law (custody and access and breach of court orders), securities class actions, and mortgage enforcement. John Polyzogopoulos

What do you do when your franchisor client has been improperly named in litigation that should have been commenced against the franchisee? This article discusses a practical approach to the problem, with reference to a recent British Columbia decision involving Subway Franchise Restaurants of Canada Ltd.

In a relatively recent decision, 2212886 Ontario Inc. v. Obsidian Group Inc., the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found that a franchisee of the Crabby Joe's system was entitled to rescind its franchise agreement due to "significant and material" omissions in the franchisor's disclosure document. Interestingly, the absence of a copy of the head lease for the business premises did not form a basis for rescission, in the court's view.

A recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice adopts a new approach to evaluating a claim for rescission under section 6(2) of the Arthur Wishart Act, (Franchise Disclosure), 2000 (SO 2000, c 3). Instead of considering whether the franchisor’s disclosure was materially deficient, thereby amounting to no disclosure at all, this recent decision looks to whether the franchisee made an “informed decision” on the basis of the disclosure provided.

The franchise relationship, although one of independent contractors, may give rise to a finding of liability on the part of a franchisor for the acts and omissions of its franchisees if certain precautions are not taken. In this article, Daniel So and Sara Michienzi consider three relatively recent human rights applications and the approaches adopted by the provincial human rights tribunals in evaluating such liability.