An authentic and fulsome apology can be a powerful tool in mediation, allowing an aggrieved party to know their experience is understood and regretted which sometimes removes settlement obstacles that legal argument alone cannot dislodge. This article discusses when apologies may be helpful in mediation, how they might be employed, and the elements of an effective apology.

With a growing emphasis on the need for efficient access to justice, and a looming overhaul to the Civil Rules, which may lead to many more summary proceedings, affidavit drafting is an increasingly crucial instrument in every litigator’s toolbox.

Parag Ray puts forward the case that supervised access in family courts should be a temporary, clinically guided intervention with clear behavioural “thresholds” and step-up plans, rather than an indefinite punitive arrangement. Emphasizes differentiating real risk from alienation and using reintegration therapy to move families toward unsupervised parenting time.

Introduction

Foreign property issues arise frequently in Ontario family law, but the legal framework is often misunderstood. The first thing to know is that Ontario courts cannot make an order determining title, interest, or right to a foreign property: Tezcan v. Tezcan 1987 CanLII 157 (BC CA), [1987], 11 R.F.L. (3d) 113 (B.C.C.A.); Macedo v. Macedo 1996 CanLII 19734 (ON CTGD), [1996], 19 R.F.L., 4^th 65 (Ont. S.C.J.).

In Personam Jurisdiction

However, Ontario courts can exercise their in personam jurisdiction with respect to foreign property. In Catania v. Giannattasio, (1999), 174 D.L.R. (4th) 170 (C.A.), (“Catania”), the Ontario Court of Appeal lists four requirements that must be satisfied before the court can exercise its in personam jurisdiction:

1. The court must have in personam jurisdiction over the defendant;
2. There must be a personal obligation running between the parties;
3. The jurisdiction cannot be exercised if the local court cannot supervise the execution of the order; and
4. The court will not exercise jurisdiction if the order would be of no effect in the foreign location where the property is situated.

For far too long coercive control was an insidious yet unrecognized form of social depravity and abuse, largely perpetrated against women in intimate relationships. Until recently, coercive control was ignored by professionals, including lawyers, though this is rapidly changing. The 2021 amendments to the Divorce Act recognized that “coercive and controlling” behaviour as a form of family violence that should be considered in making parenting orders, and in 2023 in Malaviya v. Dhir, a family court judge recognized that this form of abuse may be the basis for setting aside a domestic contract. Parliament is in the process of enacting legislation that will criminalize coercive or controlling conduct causing an intimate partner to believe that their safety is threatened. A pressing concern for the family justice professionals is the recent Supreme Court decision in Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia, which has created the new tort of “intimate partner violence” for cases where a court “objectively” identifies “coercive control.”

This article begins to address a major challenge that family lawyers and judges are facing, how to “objectively” establish that a woman has been a victim of coercive control. We argue that like other concepts in family law, like “parental alienation” or even “the best interests of the child,” there is not a single precise definition, let alone a psychological instrument, to establish that there has been “coercive control,” but that using existing social science research will allow family justice professionals to develop a workable approach to identify coercive control and provide compensation for genuine victims of this form of abuse without swallowing the entire family justice process in endless post-mortems over every failed intimate relationship.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently delivered a strong reminder of the strict scope of trust obligations under the Construction Act. In a summary judgment decision, the Court not only held a contractor liable for unpaid invoices, but also imposed personal liability on its directors for commingling trust funds with general operating funds and failing to maintain a separate trust account.

Among the key “modernization” reforms introduced through Ontario’s 2018 amendments to the Construction Act were enhanced accounting obligations governing the handling of trust funds by contractors and subcontractors. These obligations require, among other things, that trust funds be deposited into a separate account in the trustee’s name and that proper records be maintained regarding the receipt and disbursement of those funds. The scope of liability under these provisions continues to evolve through judicial interpretation.

In Morin Bros. Building Supplies Inc. v Bond Group Ottawa 2018 Inc., 2025 ONSC 5561, the Court clarified several important aspects of sections 8 and 13 of the Construction Act and signalled a willingness to take an expansive approach to statutory trust compliance.

The Court of Appeal in Nigro v. Luciano upheld the motion judge’s finding that a dog walker who was attacked by the dog she was walking and in control of qualified as an “owner” for the purposes of the Dog Owners' Liability Act("DOLA"). Accordingly, she could not recover damages from who would commonly be considered to be the dog's actual owners.

In Justice Pomerance's decision, it is made clear that DOLA does not restrict liability to those with the highest level of authority over a dog. Affirming the principle from the Court of Appeal's previous decision, Wilk v. Arbour ("Wilk"), the Court held that a person in physical possession and control of a dog just before it bites or attacks is a person who "possesses" the dog and is therefore considered to be an "owner" under DOLA.

1) Introduction: Information, Connection and Obligation

We live in an age of information, in which information is currency. Participation in an information economy constantly gives rise to relationships of trust, in which personal information is entrusted to those who are tasked, expressly or impliedly, with safeguarding it. In Jones v Tsige, the Court of Appeal for Ontario recognized that the relationships that necessarily emerge in an increasingly networked world must be regarded as legal relationships that gave rise to legal duties at common law:

The Internet and digital technology have brought an enormous change in the way we communicate and in our capacity to capture, store and retrieve information… routinely kept electronic databases render our most personal financial information vulnerable. Sensitive information as to our health is similarly available, as are records of the books we have borrowed or bought, the movies we have rented or downloaded, where we have shopped, where we have travelled and the nature of our communications by cellphone, e-mail or text message. It is within the capacity of the common law to evolve to respond to the problem posed by the routine collection and aggregation of highly personal information that is readily accessible in electronic form.

The Mareva Injunction and Pre-Judgment Garnishment Vacuum

Introduction

A judgment is only as good as a creditor’s ability to collect on it, and in Ontario, that ability turns on a question of timing. A plaintiff who suspects that a defendant is quietly moving money offshore, draining a bank account, or converting assets into something harder to trace, such as cryptocurrency, cannot simply ask the court to seize those assets while the lawsuit is pending. Ontario offers no general pre-judgment garnishment, and so the plaintiff must instead reach for an equitable remedy that was never designed to be a substitute for one: the Mareva injunction (sometimes with the assistance of a Norwich order).

This article argues that Ontario's reliance on equity to do the work of a statute it has declined to enact is the source of much of the doctrinal untidiness in this area, and that the rise of cryptocurrency disputes has unduly burdened legal practitioners in the satisfaction of securing a Mareva injunction. Legislative reform to address a codified Mareva injunction regime and the issue arise from a pre-judgment garnishment vacuum is warranted.

Introduction

Software tools or systems that use artificial intelligence often rely on third party providers to perform core AI functions such as processing user requests (input) and generating responses (output). Many use external AI “models” – complex mathematical and computational systems that analyze vast amounts of data to recognize patterns or make decisions - such as those offered by OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. These models analyze, interpret or respond to user input and produce output in the form of text, images, or speech. Depending on their design and capabilities, AI-enabled products may rely on additional components including open-source libraries, cloud infrastructure, computing resources, servers, and development tools to build, run and maintain AI systems. These building blocks are supplied, hosted or managed by the vendor of the product, its affiliates or by third party providers. The network of external components and third-party service providers that support the operation of an AI product is analogous to a traditional product supply chain in that multiple actors and dependencies contribute to the final product that is delivered to the user.