-
October 08, 2026
WeirFoulds LLP has welcomed Valentine Gurfinkel and Jill Snelgrove as partners in its tax and construction practice groups.
-
October 08, 2026
Every family lawyer has heard a client say, “I don’t care what it costs. I just want to win.” The recent costs ruling in Perera v. Perera, 2026 ONSC 5206 is what “winning” looks like.
-
October 08, 2026
With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence in the legal field, we often hear the same question arise again and again: will AI replace the need for estate planning lawyers? It’s a fair question now that legal tech is able to draft a variety of documents, conduct legal research and review huge volumes of information in seconds.
-
October 08, 2026
“Money is a barren substitute for health and personal happiness, but to the extent within reason that money can be used to sustain or improve the mental or physical health of the injured person it may properly form part of a claim.”
-
October 07, 2026
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser says the Liberal majority government will introduce “in weeks” groundbreaking legislation to permit persons with serious medical conditions to consent in advance to medical assistance in dying (MAID), i.e. before they lose their capacity to consent to the procedure. The planned bill would also bar MAID access on an “indeterminate basis” to persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness, he said.
-
October 07, 2026
The B.C. Court of Appeal has agreed to hear an appeal over whether an Arbitration Act provision that suspends limitation periods when an action is stayed in favour of arbitration applies to contractual deadlines as well as statutory ones.
-
October 07, 2026
The B.C. Supreme Court has dismissed a builder’s bid to cancel a certificate of pending litigation in a dispute relating to alleged non-compliance of home and unfinished drainage works.
-
October 07, 2026
Defamation and harassment claims are most often brought by individuals, but corporations may have the same right to seek relief when they become the target of a sustained online campaign. A recent Ontario decision shows how the courts may act to protect a business from an escalating series of online attacks.
-
October 07, 2026
Kevin Smith has joined the partnership at McEwan Partners in Vancouver.
-
October 07, 2026
Scarfone Hawkins LLP has welcomed James Price, Reilly McIlhone, Tania Robinson and Andrew Spelman as associate lawyers in its Hamilton office.
-
October 07, 2026
Appeal by Millstone Homes Inc. (Millstone) from judgment finding an agreement of purchase and sale (APS) for a new home valid, awarding Kevin damages and increasing the prejudgment interest rate.
-
October 06, 2026
An Alberta lawyer is calling a number of mandatory training and professional requirements from the provincial law society ideologically driven as part of an appeal of a decision that dismissed his constitutional challenge against the regulator last year.
-
October 06, 2026
Manitoba is looking to remove limitation periods for civil claims stemming from intimate partner violence involving “coercive control.” According to an Oct. 5 news release, the province has introduced legislative amendments to its Limitations Act that “would allow survivors to pursue civil action regardless of when the abuse occurred.”
-
October 06, 2026
Criminal court judges must remember that instructing a jury about evidence of fabrication is to be done only for the accused — not a complainant, says the lawyer of a man who maintains his ex-wife trumped up assault claims against him to gain an edge in their divorce.
-
October 06, 2026
Intergenerational estate freezes have long served as a bedrock mechanism for Canadian business owners seeking to defer tax and shelter wealth across generations. For years, corporate planners and family litigators assumed that routing future growth through a post-marriage discretionary family trust would cloak that interest as an excluded “gift after marriage” under Ontario’s Family Law Act (FLA).
-
October 06, 2026
The vendor signed a letter of intent, opened its books for due diligence, then walked away without explanation — or, worse, sold to a third party. The buyer, meanwhile, has incurred tens of thousands of dollars in professional fees. What can he do? In Quebec, the answer is rarely as favourable as the buyer hopes. Specific performance of the sale is possible in theory, but legal and practical obstacles make it exceptional. In most cases, a claim for damages remains the only realistic avenue.
-
October 06, 2026
Appeal by Sparling and Sutcliffe from the dismissal of their judicial review petition. Since September 2022, Zheng issued Sparling and Sutcliffe six notices to end their tenancy “for landlord’s use of property” and a seventh for “cause.”
-
October 05, 2026
Canada needs to find new ways to sustain and strengthen its democratic institutions, especially to drive home to Canadians how much their independent justice system benefits them in their daily lives, top jurists say. At the Oct. 5 ceremonial opening of the Supreme Court of Canada’s judicial year in Ottawa, Chief Justice of Canada Richard Wagner told the audience of lawyers and judges he appreciated that “across the country, I’ve seen many of you speak out publicly to reiterate the importance of the rule of law and of an independent judiciary.”
-
October 05, 2026
The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed appeals over charitable donation tax credits claimed by appellants, affirming findings that the software licences donated by the taxpayers had little or no reliable proven value. In over 1,500 related cases, not one appeal was successful.
-
October 05, 2026
The Ontario Court of Appeal has overturned a finding that former business owners had not provided personal guarantees covered by the purchaser’s indemnity agreement, ruling that the motion judge focused too narrowly on the loan’s wording instead of the commercial context of the relevant agreements.
-
October 05, 2026
Although general damages in a defamation action are not subject to a fixed ceiling or are “at-large,” courts rarely award a plaintiff significant damages for their loss of reputation. The Canadian cases in which general damages in the amounts of hundreds of thousands have been awarded are confined to circumstances where the plaintiff is a professional, such as lawyer, whose career is dependant on having a good reputation or where the defendant has been noted in default and the court is asked to assess damages based only on the representations of the defamed plaintiff.
-
October 05, 2026
Saskatchewan has appointed its first associate judges to the Court of King’s Bench following legislation that came into force Oct. 1.
-
October 05, 2026
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser has announced the appointment of eight judges in Ontario.
-
October 05, 2026
An Ontario paralegal is pledging to continue the fight after the province’s top court dealt him a blow in his attempts to argue that he has a larger scope of practice in immigration matters than the law society allows.
-
October 05, 2026
Since the Supreme Court decision in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16, my calendar has been quite busy with in-person court attendances, law association events and CPD programs.