One of the best ways for a litigator to learn is to sit in open court watching other litigators suffer through embarrassing court room experiences. In one of my early days appearing on the Estates List, I had one such experience, and the litigator’s lesson that day centred on the often-misunderstood deemed undertaking rule. On […]
We have been hearing a lot lately about secret audio/video footage – from late night wild rants at the Steak Queen to a pro-life liberal MP chided by a conservative sympathiser into calling Justin Trudeau’s recent stance on abortion a “bozo eruption”. If you google the words “secret taping”, a list of smart phone products appear,
The recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Kavanagh v. Lajoie serves as a reminder to folks on the receiving end of a promise not to count their chickens before they are hatched. In 2005, Mark Lajoie’s father promised to gift him a house in Ottawa. The father then transferred title to the house to himself and
In reasons delivered last week in Michipicoten First Nation v. Michipicoten First Nation Community Trust, Justice Varpio emphasized that objections to trustee accounts must be specific. If objections are too vague, then the objectors run the risk of having their objections struck. An added risk of delivering vague objections is that the lack of specificity will result
In the usual litigation battle, a release operates as a “shield” in the sense that if a beneficiary sues an estate trustee, the estate trustee can use the release as a defence. In Re: Sheard, the estate trustees were able to use signed releases to preclude them from having to pass their accounts for the period
