Costa Concordia: A Sea of Suits The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from England to New York City. The ship sank on April 15, 1912. History repeated itself nearly 100 years later when the Costa Concordia hit a rock off the Coast of Italy and sunk on January 13, 2012. As [...]

The past year has been quite the roller coaster for libel and defamation cases here at TheCourt.ca.  Our Senior Contributing Editor, Tiffany Wong, covered two crucial UK cases here and here, as well as the titillating “Officer Bubbles” story here.  Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) also released the landmark [...]

This March, the United States Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) will consider whether to certify the largest employment discrimination class action in the country’s history.  For nearly ten years, Betty Dukes and five other representative plaintiffs have held the “David v. Goliath” title after they brought a lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of all women employed by [...]

The Ontario Court of Appeal released a judgment this past summer with significant importance for those interested in Canadian class action suits.  This decision marks the first time the Ontario Court of Appeal has certified a competition class action, and should be closely followed by franchisors with vertical pricing agreements. As noted by S. Dhawan [...]

Most Torontonians have been inconvenienced by the Toronto Transit Commission (“TTC”), but ultimately sigh and move on. This is not the case for a group of small-business owners, who have launched a $105 million lawsuit against the Ontario government, the City of Toronto and the TTC for lost business as a result of the St. [...]

When two trial courts faced with similar facts come to opposite conclusions, it’s almost certain that the cases will go up the appellate ladder. So it is with two class actions getting underway against CIBC and the Bank of Nova Scotia, both of whom are alleged to have withheld overtime pay from their employees. The [...]

Unlike the U.S. courts, which are recognized for certifying a multitude of class actions and awarding prodigious punitive damages, Canadian courts see a negligible number of class actions being brought forward. Class actions in Canada rarely proceed to a contested certification motion. They often reach the certification checkpoint and are denied certification on the basis [...]

Imagine the following scenario: Bob owns a house in a town in Quebec. In 2020, Quebec passes legislation to the effect that no municipality may increase property taxes by more than 10% each year. In 2022, citing the need for higher revenues to account for an increase in police services due to rising crime, the [...]

On October 1st, 2009, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its judgment in Sutts, Strosberg LLP v. Atlas Cold Storage Holdings Inc., 2009 ONCA 690. The significance of this case lies in its status as one of the few securities class actions in Canada. One counsel submitted that this “was the third largest securities class [...]