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. Tocco v. Bell Mobility Inc., 2019 ONSC 2916

[28] The causes of action premised on allegations of breach of consumer protection legislation centre on two types of breaches: unfair practices/misrepresentations and unsolicited services. These claims are focused on the alleged representations by the Defendant, and ask specifically whether they are false, misleading or deceptive in a material sense.

[29] The Plaintiffs have produced some evidence that the Defendant represented in the Notice and on its website that Class Members could opt out of having their information used in the RAP, when that apparently was inaccurate. The Plaintiffs contend that the reality was that the Defendant would continue to collect and analyze Class Members’ Personal Information regardless of whether they opted out of the RAP

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Graydon v. Michel, 2018 BCCA 449

[28] The central question is whether the trial judge had the jurisdiction to order a retroactive variation of the child support order notwithstanding that at the time of the application, A.G., who was the subject of the child support order, no longer met the definition of “child” in the Family Law Act.

[29] This jurisdictional question has been the subject of much debate throughout Canada, with different appellate courts coming to different answers to the question. With this in mind, this Court recently sat as a five-member division to consider the issue. In Dring v. Gheyle, this Court decided by a majority that the Family Law Act did not confer jurisdiction on a judge to retroactively vary child support orders where the formal legal procedure triggering jurisdiction to vary is first commenced after the subject of the order has ceased to be a child under the statutory definition.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. R. v. Chioros, 2019 ONCA 388

[17] Pursuant to s. 9 of the Charter, the police must have reasonable and probable grounds to believe that they have sufficient evidence of a crime to facilitate an arrest. When the grounds to arrest stem, at least in part, from a confidential informant, the court must conduct a Debot analysis and look at the totality of the circumstances to determine if the confidential information is sufficiently credible, compelling, and corroborated to support the arrest. Weaknesses in one area may be compensated by strengths in the other two: R. v. Debot, 1989 CanLII 13 (SCC), [1989] 2 S.C.R. 1140, at p.1168.

[18] Given that this was an anonymous tip, there was no evidence regarding the tipster’s credibility. Nor was there evidence regarding his reliability or motivation in providing the information. It was an error, therefore, for the trial judge to find the tip to be credible.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Karras c. Société des loteries du Québec, 2019 QCCA 813

[40] Dans le présent cas, l’appelante, en avouant qu’elle croyait que ses chances de gagner le gros lot du 6/49 étaient de 1 chance sur 5 millions, était parfaitement au courant, indépendamment de toute la publicité de l’intimée, que ses chances de gagner étaient infiniment minces. Le seul fait d’apprendre que ses chances sont encore plus faibles qu’elle ne le croyait, à raison de 1 sur 14 millions, ne suffit pas à démontrer un impact dans l’esprit du consommateur crédule et inexpérimenté faisant son choix d’acheter ou non des billets de loterie. Le « fait important » est la faible chance de gagner plutôt que les statistiques mathématiques.

(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.