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. S.W.-S. v. R.S., 2021 ONCJ 646

[65] In determining a suspension of face-to-face contact the court must assess the medical vulnerabilities of children in the home, the ability of the parents to follow COVID-19 health protocols and the risk to the child of diminishing their relationship with one parent. See: C.L.B. v. A.J.N., 2020 ONCJ 213. The court must balance the harm of COVID-19 exposure with harm to children being denied face-to-face contact with a parent. See: Pollard v. Joshi, 2020 ONSC 2701.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. TSCC 2204 v. Panagiotou, 2021 ONSC 8199

[11] What is plain and obvious to me is that these disputes have been escalated almost on autopilot instead of being sensibly de-escalated and resolved. The plaintiff moved from lawyer’s letters with demands for payment of the resulting invoices to filing a lien to bringing this law suit to evict the defendant from her unit to sell the unit to satisfy the lien with barely a pause to consider whether this was in any way the most efficient and proportional way of defusing the situation. Each step was taken on a unilateral basis and it is hard to step back and describe any of this as being in any way preferable or more efficient than following the agreement that the law mandates and submitting the dispute to mediation instead. Arguments that there are no “disputes” here are nothing but the purest of sophistry.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Cineplex v. Cineworld, 2021 ONSC 8016

[110] The concept of what is in the ordinary course of business for a particular business is a flexible and contextual one and is a question of mixed fact and law: Stelco Inc. (Re), 2007 ONCA 483, [2007] O.J. No. 2533, at para. 81 citing 369413 Alberta Ltd. v. Pocklington, 2000 ABCA 307, 271 A.R. 280 (C.A.), at para. 23. In the mergers and acquisitions context, the cases have considered whether a buyer can be relieved from completing a transaction where the seller operated outside of the ordinary course. The court’s analysis tends to be fact specific.[10]

[111] In general terms, buyers have been excused from closing a transaction where the seller’s actions significantly change the nature of the business or have a long-lasting impact that would affect the buyer in operating the business after closing: Fairstone, at paras. 163, 179.

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The most-consulted French-language decision was Pharmaciens (Ordre professionnel des) c. Juneau, 2021 QCCDPHA 62

[157] Dans l’affaire Jodoin[48], le conseil de discipline de l’Ordre des psychologues du Québec souligne que le professionnel est « le seul à connaître toutes les exigences de l’exercice de sa profession, pas son client », en ajoutant « [qu’]en détenant des privilèges de pratique, il a l’entière responsabilité de toute violation des exigences de cette pratique ». Le conseil appuie sa conclusion par l’arrêt rendu par la Cour suprême dans R. c. Fitzpatrick[49] qui rappelle les principes de responsabilité attachés à la personne qui accepte les conditions d’une activité réglementée, lesquels sont dégagés par l’arrêt R. c. Wholesale Travel Group Inc.[50]

(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.