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. Del Giudice v. Thompson, 2021 ONSC 5379

[120] The first criterion for certification is that the plaintiff’s pleading discloses a cause of action. The “plain and obvious” test from Rule 21 of the Rules of Civil Procedure for disclosing a cause of action from Hunt v. Carey Canada,[35] is used to determine whether a proposed class proceeding discloses a cause of action for the purposes of s. 5(1)(a) of the Class Proceedings Act, 1992. To satisfy the first criterion for certification, a claim will be satisfactory, unless it has a radical defect, or it is plain and obvious that it could not succeed.[36]

[121] The failure to establish a cause of action usually arises in one of two ways: (1) the allegations in the statement of claim do not plead all the elements necessary for a recognized cause of action; or (2) the allegations in the statement of claim do not come within a recognized cause of action.[37]

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Ouellette et al v Law Society of Alberta, 2021 ABCA 283

[19] In addition, the adjudicator must be satisfied that the proposed appeal has a reasonable chance of success.[28] In the context of permission-to-appeal applications under rule 14.5(1)(a), a proposed appeal has a reasonable chance of success if the likelihood the appeal will succeed exceeds forty percent. In other words, the applicant’s likelihood of success must not be substantially less than the respondent’s likelihood of success. This Court would not be a careful steward of the resources the state invests in the administration of justice if it granted leave to appeal to applicants whose prospects of success were substantially less than the respondent’s prospects of success. A marked disparity in the strength of the parties’ positions is a clear signal that granting leave to appeal is an imprudent order.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Rebel News Network Ltd. v Gilmore, 2021 ONSC 3490

[8] As a result, the onus shifted to the plaintiff under Section 137.1(4) of the Courts of Justice Act, supra to show the action has substantial merit and the defendant has no valid defences. Further, the harm likely to be suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the defendant’s expression of the matter in the public interest is sufficiently serious that the public interest in permitting the action to continue outweighs the public interest in protecting the defendant’s rights to express his view of how the plaintiff operates.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales c. 3095-2899 Québec inc., 2021 QCCA 1222

[26] Dans le cas présent, il n’est pas opportun d’avoir recours à la doctrine du functus officio pour décider s’il y a lieu de considérer ou non la Transcription révisée pour les fins de l’appel. À l’instar de la Cour suprême dans l’affaire Teskey, l’appel peut être résolu en évaluant s’il y a crainte légitime de partialité en raison d’une justification a posteriori qui vienne compromettre la présomption d’intégrité du juge dans les circonstances particulières de l’affaire.

(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.