Personal Injury
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October 08, 2025
Fraser calls provinces’ demand to scrap Ottawa’s SCC arguments on notwithstanding clause ‘untenable’
Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser has pushed back against the demands of five premiers that Ottawa should drop its novel arguments at the Supreme Court that there are substantive constraints on governments’ powers to invoke the Charter’s s. 33 “notwithstanding” clause — arguments that those five provinces contend “represent a complete disavowal of the constitutional bargain that brought the Charter into being” in 1982.
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October 08, 2025
Justice system doesn’t work if court orders become discretionary: lawyer
An Ontario court has given a warning that defendants should be wary of paying out settlement funds when facing a charging order. That was the finding by a three-judge divisional panel of the Ontario Superior Court in an action revolving around the enforcement of a charging order in a motor vehicle accident case.
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October 07, 2025
Attorney General Sean Fraser tells SCC the law needs to protect people with ‘no voice’
There was a celebratory mood at the opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025-26 court year, but Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser and other legal leaders delivered a sober message to the Ottawa courtroom packed with lawyers and judges.
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October 07, 2025
Small change, big impact: Ontario expands small claims jurisdiction to $50,000
As of Oct. 1, 2025, the monetary jurisdiction of Ontario’s small claims court has increased from $35,000 to $50,000 (exclusive of costs and interest). While it may appear a merely incremental change, the increase represents a significant procedural development in Ontario’s justice system, affecting not just new claims but potentially existing ones as well.
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October 07, 2025
Lawyer ordered to pay costs for non-disclosure of gen AI use and citing fake precedents in court
In a cautionary case for litigation lawyers who use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for court submissions, a Federal Court associate judge recently hit an immigration lawyer with personal costs for submitting two defective AI-generated precedents and for breaching the Federal Court’s requirement to disclose any generative AI use in court filings.
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October 06, 2025
Who is responsible when a dog bites? Part two
Everybody likes the dog until it bites.
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October 02, 2025
Line crossed: IRCC’s proposed administrative monetary penalties should alarm all Canadian bars
The federal government is quietly implementing a regulatory framework that should alarm every lawyer in Canada, regardless of practice area. Under the guise of addressing immigration “ghost consultants,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has crafted administrative monetary penalties (AMPs) that grant it unprecedented authority to discipline lawyers — the same lawyers who routinely challenge that department’s decisions in court.
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September 30, 2025
Federal Court of Appeal revives RCMP mental health services negligence class action
The Federal Court of Appeal has revived a proposed class action alleging systemic negligence in the RCMP’s delivery of mental health care, ruling the Federal Court erred in finding plaintiffs conceded that the claims of class members were barred under the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act (CLPA).
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September 26, 2025
Ontario opening of the courts ceremony highlights digitization, reform of Rules of Civil Procedure
On Sept. 25, judges, attorneys general, leaders of law associations and others met for Ontario’s opening of the courts ceremony, discussing various strategies that have been and will be undertaken to improve access to justice. This included digitization and reformation of the Rules of Civil Procedure.
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September 26, 2025
Nearly $2 million awarded in landmark online defamation case
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice released its decision in Canadian Aids Treatment Information Exchange et al. v. Blackwell, 2025 ONSC 4678 on Aug. 19, 2025, granting one of the largest awards ever issued in a Canadian defamation lawsuit.