Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Sorochan v Bouchier, 2015 ABCA 212

[39] Thus, another equally plausible inference is that, given her age and the permanent and significant nature of her disability, it was not reasonable for the appellant to apply for Long Term Disability Benefits and meet its rehabilitation requirements with a view to someday returning to the classroom. It is far from certain that she would ever recover to the point of being able to resume the physical demands placed on an elementary school teacher, even after taking rehabilitation treatment. Such a conclusion would not have been unreasonable given her circumstances.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Fraser Health Authority v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2014 BCCA 499

[64] The question of the proper “object” of judicial review in a case such as this – i.e., where the panel carrying out the reconsideration does not simply affirm the original decision without comment but provides extensive reasons – seems to me more of a practical problem than one of principle. Since the reconsideration is a review of the original decision, both should usually be before the court in a judicial review setting, even though the petition for judicial review must logically seek the review of the reconsideration decision. That said, in other statutory contexts where the second decision replaces the first, there may be no point in reviewing the first decision.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Zurich Life Insurance Company Limited v Branco, 2015 SKCA 71

[184] Next, it is necessary to consider the trial judge’s statement that Zurich’s improper denial of benefits extended for ten years. It is not apparent how the judge arrived at the ten-year figure. The bookends of the dealings between Mr. Branco and Zurich were 2002 (when his claim was approved) and 2009 (when his claim was paid out by Zurich). That is seven years. In any event, and much more fundamentally and as discussed above, the trial judge’s assessment of this point is based on an error—a failure to understand or consider the nature of the Zurich policy. More specifically, the trial judge did not appreciate that the policy provided two distinct kinds of coverage: “own occupation” and “any occupation.” Ms. Todesco’s decision to approve Mr. Branco’s claim in 2002 was made in relation to “own occupation” benefits only. They were available for a period of two years. While Zurich acknowledges that it wrongly failed to pay out those benefits until 2009, it maintains that it acted properly and reasonably in denying “any occupation” benefits until that date.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. c. Létourneau, 2012 QCCA 2013

[3] Selon qu’il y ait ou non chose jugée en l’espèce, se pose alors la question de savoir s’il peut s’établir une relation client-avocat entre les membres du groupe visé par un recours collectif et l’avocat qui agit pour les représentants de ce groupe, question qui est également de principe. Tel est le cas, de même, de la question du droit de la partie défenderesse à un recours collectif d’interroger des membres du groupe, notamment en vue d’établir, aux termes de l’article 1031 C.p.c., le caractère inapproprié d’un recouvrement collectif.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.