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In a recent decision, Hummel Properties Inc v Niagara-on-the-Lake (Town), the Ontario Court of Appeal affirmed that the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s enactment of an interim control by-law (“ICBL”) was illegal. The decision, summarized below, has important implications for municipalities, developers, and builders across Ontario.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario has once again reaffirmed the deference afforded to first instance judges in cases of contractual interpretation that rely heavily on the factual matrix—even where the underlying facts and history are unique.
The Supreme Court of Canada recently granted leave to appeal in the decision of Murray-Hall c Procureure generale du Quebec, opening the door for the Court to consider the constitutionality of provincial legislation purportedly aimed at regulating cannabis production and possession in the province of Quebec. The case is significant because it focuses on the validity of provincial legislation which directly contradicts federal legislation on the same issue.
Many of you have seen our weekly blog posts that provide predictions as to how likely it is that particular cases will get leave to the Supreme Court of Canada. Those predictions are based on a dataset of every Supreme Court leave application decision from January 1, 2018 to the present. While those predictions are one use of our data, it’s not the only use. Here we present another: a quantitative year in review of leave applications decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2021.
In the spring of 2020, we posted an analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2019 Year in Review and summarized some of the statistics found in that document. Unfortunately, the general statistics found in the 2019 Year Review were high level and limited the analysis we could provide about what was happening at the Supreme Court of Canada. We also could not find any publicly available and current datasets that would allow us to provide a more detailed analysis.
As I have posted before, I’m a fan of using empirical data to inform legal practice. Much as the evidence-based medicine movement has taken hold in the field of medicine, the practice of law should, wherever possible, rely on objective data to inform our decision-making. Unfortunately, empirical legal work remains at an early stage. While there are some academics embracing empirical analysis, much of legal academic scholarship does not involve the quantitative analysis of empirical data. In my view, it is important for lawyers to test our intuitions whenever we can by reference to whatever data is available.
The Supreme Court of Canada has announced important changes to the Rules of the Supreme Court of Canada that will take effect on January 27, 2021. The amendments were published in the Canada Gazette here, and the Supreme Court of Canada has also published a plain language guide for these amendments here. While these changes are fairly minor in the grand scheme of Supreme Court practice, they will simplify the process for seeking leave to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Lawyers are trained to do close and careful reading of cases. We are experts in textual analysis of individual decisions, and we can spend hours arguing over what individual paragraphs in Supreme Court of Canada decisions mean. Yet while individual decisions are important, so are the aggregate trends. Quantitative data can reveal important information that lawyers can use to engage in more effective advocacy and better inform our clients as to what to expect.
The Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure allow for certain matters to proceed by way of application, where a court can determine a discrete legal issue without the need for a full trial. Although an application can be an expeditious and cost-effective way to resolve a legal dispute, lawyers should be careful to ensure the issues in the case are the proper subject matter of an application. The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Jackson v Solar Income Fund Inc is an important reminder of the limits of an application and the court’s unwillingness to make rulings on the basis of a limited evidentiary record.
Businesses need to be able to resolve disputes quickly and effectively. For that reason, the Ontario Business Corporations Act (the “OBCA”) provides that any appeal of an order made under the OBCA lies to the Divisional Court (a special branch of the Superior Court of Justice), instead of the Court of Appeal. In theory, appeals to the Divisional Court are resolved more quickly than appeals to the Court of Appeal.
