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Good afternoon,

Following are the summaries for this week’s civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for Ontario (there were only three substantive decisions).

In Lam v University of Western Ontario, 2019 ONCA 82, the appellant claim against the university had been dismissed by way of summary judgment. The appellant claimed that he was pressured to switch out of a Ph.D program and into a master’s program, in breach of contract and/or fiduciary duty. The appellant alleged that the committee lacked, or was unwilling to acquire, the necessary expertise in his area of research, and was misled and provided knowingly incorrect information about the availability and security of his funding. The motion judge had dismissed the claim largely on the basis of a determination that this was an academic matter that ought to have been pursued through the academic appeals process. The Court of Appeal disagreed and allowed the appeal. The Court confirmed that a relationship between a student and a university is contractual in nature, therefore there can be claims for breach of contract. The key to determining whether a claim is properly before the court as a breach of contract claim is the remedy sought. In this case, damages for breach of contract was the remedy sought, therefore this was properly before the civil courts and not a matter for the internal academic appeals process.

Other topics covered this week included the limitation period for enforcing foreign judgments (the later of the two years from the expiry of the appeal period from the foreign judgment and when the plaintiff knew or ought to have known that there were assets in Ontario against which the plaintiff could enforce its judgment), and striking pleadings as an abuse of process (attempt to re-litigate). Continue Reading BLANEY’S APPEALS: ONTARIO COURT OF APPEAL SUMMARIES (FEBRUARY 4 – 8, 2019)