Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

We are now several years into the “culture shift” encouraging summary dispositions rather than trials, following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Hryniak v Mauldin.^[1] Commentary from the Alberta Court of Appeal suggests that this shift has indeed resulted in an increase in the number of cases that have been decided under the summary judgment rules in ...

On February 1, 2021, amendments to B.C.’s Environmental Management Act will come into effect that will introduce new reporting requirements in relation to lands that have been used for specified commercial or industrial uses (the Stage 13 Amendments). Owners or operators of those lands who seek protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) or the ...

This post discusses the Alberta Court of Appeal's recent decision in Hannam v. Medicine Hat School District No. 76,^[1] which stands as an emphatic reminder that the Supreme Court of Canada has directed courts to grant summary judgment when a fair and just determination can be made without a trial.

Although Hannam does not change the law of summary judgment, it conveys the ...

In King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851^[1], the general rule that strata owners are “all in it together” gave way to fairness considerations and King Day Holdings Ltd. (“King Day”) reigned supreme in its claim that the strata council’s allocation of strata fees based on unit entitlement was significantly unfair.

Strata Plan LMS3851 consists ...

Can commercial tenants suffering the effects of the pandemic on their business unilaterally stop paying rent?

In a recently reported decision of the B.C. Supreme Court, Hudson’s Bay Company ULC v. Pensionfund Investment Ltd., 2020 BCSC 1959, the court attempted to balance the competing and urgent interests of commercial landlords and tenants during the current ...

Two years ago, Grant Vogeli and I wrote a blog post discussing various approaches to calculating court costs in Alberta. In that post, we lamented that the Tariff of Recoverable Fees in Division 2 of Schedule C—the cost tariff which guides judges’ decisions on costs—had not been updated for over 20 years, leading increasingly to court cost awards that were only ...

The SCC updates the law on qualified privilege and malice, holding lawyers to higher standards when making alleged defamatory statements.

In its first of two companion decisions on anti-SLAPP suit motions, the Supreme Court of Canada in Pointes Protection confirmed the test to be applied (as set out in our first blog here).

In Bent v Platnick, 2020 SCC 23 the SCC applied that ...

For most people, the concept of insider trading likely conjures up thoughts of public companies and famous U.S. cases. For instance, Jeff Skilling, the CEO of Enron, being sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined $45 million for insider trading and other crimes relating to the Enron fraud. Or Martha Stewart getting tipped off by her broker and selling $230,000 of stock in ...

As courts cautiously resume in-person hearings across the country, there is looming uncertainty about when—or if—civil jury trials will ever resume. For instance, B.C. and some regions in Ontario have announced that civil jury trials are suspended until at least 2021—and Ontario is considering whether to abolish them altogether. By contrast, Alberta is allowing ...

September 1, 2020 was a historic day for domestic arbitration in British Columbia for three reasons:

• The BC International Commercial Arbitration Centre changed its name and became the “Vancouver International Arbitration Centre” (referred to as “VanIAC”);
• The province’s new Arbitration Act (the “New Act”) came into force; and
• VanIAC’s updated ...