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. Skoblenick v. Aviva General Insurance Company, 2021 ONSC 5340

[21] One might not ordinarily expect, in the exercise of professional courtesy between counsel, that a request for an adjournment of examinations to accommodate the personal schedule of one counsel would lead to a claim for costs thrown away. However, there was no obligation on the defendant to consent to the adjournment request. It was within the reasonable expectation of the plaintiffs’ counsel that, absent consent, the request for adjournment could possibly lead to a claim for costs thrown away.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Grant Thornton LLP v. New Brunswick, 2021 SCC 31

[28] This case turns on the standard to be applied in determining whether and when a plaintiff has the requisite degree of knowledge to discover a claim under s. 5(2), thereby triggering the two-year limitation period under s. 5(1)(a). In order to properly set the standard, two distinct inquiries are required. First, in assessing if the limitation period in s. 5(1)(a) has been triggered, is the plaintiff’s state of knowledge to be assessed in the same manner as the common law rule of discoverability? Second, what is the particular degree of knowledge required to discover a claim under s. 5(2)?

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Laforme v. The Corporation of the Town of Bruce Peninsula, 2021 ONSC 5287

[48] As held in Vavilov, reasonableness focuses on the reasoning process and the outcome. In determining whether a decision is reasonable, the court is to have regard to the legal and factual constraints. Here, the legal constraint imposed on the Authority is O. Reg. 151/06, which requires the Authority to form the opinion that the development will have no negative impact on the Beach. The Authority must therefore do two things: it must form an opinion on this question, and that opinion must be reasonable. In this case, based on the staff report and the transcript from the meeting, I conclude that the Authority did not form the opinion it was required to form. It decided to make an exception to its policy, but not on the basis that the development would have no negative impact on the Beach. Rather, the rationale for the exception was based on the Town’s expressed needs. This was extraneous to the core question: would there be a negative impact?

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Bedoucha (Courtiers Excellence/Excellence Brokers) c. 9237-5914 Québec inc., 2021 QCCQ 5563

[74] Le contrat de courtage immobilier ne comporte pas uniquement une série d’obligation pour l’agence et le courtier. Ce contrat renferme aussi des obligations de la part du client. Le contrat de courtage immobilier s’insère dans la catégorie des contrats synallagmatiques ou bilatéraux, c’est-à-dire des contrats qui créent des obligations réciproques pour les parties contractantes.

(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.