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. Dentons Canada LLP v. Trisura Guarantee Insurance Company, 2018 ONSC 7311

[5] The dispute arises from an insurance claim submitted by the applicant, Dentons, to Trisura on April 10, 2017. The insurance claim arises out of an alleged social engineering fraud, in which Dentons asserts that one of its lawyers was duped into transferring over $2.5 million in funds belonging to a client to a fraudster’s account in Hong Kong.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Demetriou v. AIG Insurance Co. of Canada, 2019 ONSC 627

[79] In the case before me, putting aside the fact that there is no actual motion before me to amend the statement of defence, the case has been conducted to date on the basis that there is no allegation of fraud notwithstanding an order of the court that required AIG to allege fraud and it declined to do so. Examinations for discovery have been conducted on that basis, and the action has been readied for trial or a summary judgment motion on that basis. It is simply too late to reverse course now.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Wu v. Vancouver (City), 2019 BCCA 23

[43] This brings us to the first problem with the judge’s analysis. It is a settled principle that Canadian law does not recognize a nominate tort of breach of statutory duty. As The Queen (Can.) v. Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, 1983 CanLII 21 (SCC), [1983] 1 S.C.R. 205, and Holland v. Saskatchewan, 2008 SCC 42 (CanLII), make clear, there is no duty of care imposed on officials to act in accordance with authorizing statutes or regulations. Standing alone, a breach of a statutory duty is not a breach of a private law duty of care. While a breach of statutory duty is subsumed within the law of negligence, a breach of a statutory duty can be evidence of negligence. As a general rule, a breach of a public law duty is not sufficient to establish the breach of a private law duty. The first is not readily converted to the second. The existence of a private law duty of care must be established by the application of common law principles.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Ville de Saguenay c. Construction Unibec inc., 2019 QCCA 38

[36] Le juge de première instance ne pouvait donc pas conclure à la formation d’un nouveau contrat, en l’absence d’une résolution du conseil de l’appelante autorisant l’exécution des travaux, d’un règlement de délégation adopté en application des articles 350 et 477.2 de la L.C.V. par le conseil de l’appelante autorisant son employé à modifier le contrat intervenu avec Unibec et à en conclure un nouveau, ou en l’absence d’une résolution du conseil de l’appelante ratifiant a posteriori le consentement verbal donné par son employé.

(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.