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. Funk v Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, 2017 ABQB 308

[54] Given the intention of parties to this type of insurance coverage, which is to compensate the insured person injured as a result of an incident involving an unidentified automobile, it seems unreasonable to enforce a term of the contract that demands physical contact between the insured motor vehicle and the unidentified automobile, notwithstanding the existence of physical evidence corroborating the fact that the relevant incident occurred as a result of the insured’s defensive driving action directed at avoiding physical contact with another vehicle.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9

[1] This appeal calls on the Court to consider, once again, the troubling question of the approach to be taken in judicial review of decisions of administrative tribunals. The recent history of judicial review in Canada has been marked by ebbs and flows of deference, confounding tests and new words for old problems, but no solutions that provide real guidance for litigants, counsel, administrative decision makers or judicial review judges. The time has arrived for a reassessment of the question.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Presidential MSH Corporation v. Marr Foster & Co. LLP, 2017 ONCA 325

[49] In the present case, I conclude that the motion judge erred in holding that the appellant knew or ought to have known that its proceeding was appropriate as early as April 2010, when it received the CRA’s Notices of Assessment disallowing its tax credits. In my view, the proceeding was not appropriate, and the plaintiff’s underlying claim was not discovered, until May 2011, when the CRA responded to the appellant’s Notice of Objection and advised that it intended to confirm its initial assessments. The motion judge erred at para. 67 of his reasons by equating knowledge that the defendants had caused a loss with a conclusion that a proceeding would be an appropriate means to seek a remedy for the loss. I say this for the following reasons.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was C.S. c. Ville de Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval, 2017 QCCAI 87

[20] Or, dans le présent cas, la preuve démontre que l’organisme n’a pas refusé de communiquer à la demanderesse ces mêmes documents en format PDF, comme elle le souhaite, c’est son droit, dans la mesure où cela est possible.

[21] Toutefois, la preuve démontre que l’organisme a tenté de numériser ces mêmes pages et les enregistrer sur une clé USB, ce qui a été impossible, puisque cette clé n’a pas la capacité suffisante pour contenir toutes ces pages. Il s’agit de difficultés pratiques sérieuses qui doivent être prises en considération et l’organisme en a fait la preuve à la satisfaction de la Commission.

(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.