Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

A recent Supreme Court of Canada case highlights the importance of procedural and substantive decisions where restitutionary damages are to be calculated on an aggregate basis. These issues are particularly acute in cases that seek to recover damages from a large scale fraud.

In Christine DeJong Medicine Professional Corp v. DBDC Spadina Ltd., 2019 SCC 30 ...

Section 43 of the Alberta Arbitration Act is a statutory exception to functus officio

Historically, the doctrine of functus officio applied to hold that a decision maker could not reopen a hearing or amend an award that was final. This doctrine has, however, been relaxed over time in the judicial, administrative, and arbitration contexts. There are now a number of common law ...

Negative reviews posted on websites such as Better Business Bureau, Yelp, Glassdoor, and Facebook can be devastating to companies, and perhaps even fatal to small businesses and sole practitioners who rely on goodwill and word of mouth recommendations. Although the ill effects of a single negative review may be mitigated in cases where it is outweighed by positive ...

Publication (communication of defamatory material to someone other than the plaintiff) is an essential element in a defamation claim. In the recent decision in Malak v Hanna, 2019 BCCA 106 (“Malak”) the British Columbia Court of Appeal confirmed that merely sending a hyperlink to defamatory material does not constitute publication.  

In Malak, the plaintiff and his ...

On April 25, 2019, the Federal Court of Appeal issued its decision in a longstanding patent dispute in the oil patch regarding hydraulic fracturing technology: Packers Plus Energy Services Inc. and Rapid Completions LLC v. Essential Energy Services Ltd. et al, 2019 FCA 96. In support of its patent, Packers had issued a series of infringement suits against several players in ...

Earlier this month, the B.C. Court of Appeal rendered its decision in West Van Holdings Ltd. v. Economical Mutual Insurance Company, 2019 BCCA 110 – a case which considered whether insurers can rely on certain exclusion clauses to deny or preclude coverage for environmental contamination and pollution claims.

The two insured entities, West Van Holdings Ltd. and West Van ...

Second marriages are common. They frequently occur when one or both individuals already have adult children. Sometimes these melded families work and everyone gets along, or at least are pleasant enough to each other. Occasionally it does not go that well.  In either case, but particularly the latter, difficult legal questions can arise that should to be addressed rather ...

On February 6, 2019, the Alberta Court of Appeal delivered its much anticipated decision in Weir-Jones Technical Services Incorporated v Purolator Courier Ltd, 2019 ABCA 49 (Weir-Jones). The decision provides clarification and guidance on two topics in which competing lines of authority had recently emerged in Alberta: (1) the correct standard of proof for summary ...

A recent decision from the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench raises the issue of whether similar fact evidence may be useful in a limitations defence.

In Capital Power PPA Management Inc. v. TransAlta Corporation, 2018 ABQB 1036, Justice Rooke summarily dismissed Capital Power’s action on limitation grounds.

Capital Power and TransAlta were parties to the (now ...

The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) recently changed the legal landscape on the media’s ability to contest production orders that implicate journalists’ sources.  

The facts in R v Vice Media Inc., 2018 SCC 53 (Vice Media) involve a savvy journalist, an unsympathetic source, and the SCC’s unanimous decision to uphold the production order. The court split 5-4 in its ...