How courts measure and award compensation in civil claims, from personal injury and wrongful death to property and economic loss.
A Puslinch century farmhouse looked beautifully renovated. The structural work had no building permit, and no one disclosed it. In Slatkovsky v Machado, the Ontario Superior Court held both the vendors and their double-ending agent liable, awarding the buyers $150,318 and confirming that the owner’s permit duty cannot be passed off to a contractor.
Does a title insurer have to pay to repair a home, or can it demolish the offending work and pay the lost value instead? In a $1.1M TitlePLUS dispute over unpermitted construction on a Winnipeg home, the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba answered (2025 MBKB 131). The decision is persuasive only in Ontario and is now under appeal.
A purchaser must inspect, but a vendor cannot hide behind “buyer beware” after actively concealing what is wrong with a home. In Austin v MacFarlane, 2026 ONSC 463, a North Bay buyer discovered foundation cracks, hidden mould, and an improperly built deck days after closing, with repairs exceeding $119,000. The Ontario Superior Court explains where vendor silence ends and active concealment begins.
Liability for the 2010 laundry-room gas explosion was admitted, so the only question at trial was damages, and the plaintiffs sought more than $16 million. After a four-week trial and nearly 13 years of litigation, Justice Schabas of the Ontario Superior Court dismissed the action entirely, finding the plaintiffs had not proven the explosion caused their claimed losses. Christopher Morrison and Margaret Klassen acted for the fourth parties.
A pickup truck stopped in traffic, a rear-end collision with a TTC bus, and a jury award topping $1.5 million for chronic pain and lost earning capacity. On appeal, the defendants attacked the trial judge’s jury charge on causation, apportionment, and past income loss. In Meldazy v Nassar, 2025 ONCA 590, the Court of Appeal found no error and dismissed the appeal, a reminder that an appeal is not a second trial.
An 18-day jury trial, a damages award just over $1 million, and a costs award of nearly the same amount: the defendants said the trial judge had failed to test the plaintiff’s costs for reasonableness and proportionality. In Pye v Di Trapani, 2025 ONCA 355, the Court of Appeal disagreed, reaffirming the broad discretion trial judges hold over costs and the powerful role a Rule 49 offer plays in the result.
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s first decision of 2025, Kramer v Ballantyne-Gaska, is a win for the firm’s clients. The Court dismissed the vendors’ appeal in full, upholding findings of breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation over undisclosed, non-compliant underground gas tanks, and rejecting their attempt to reduce the damages on a betterment theory.
A criminal conviction punishes an impaired driver, but it rarely makes the victim’s family whole. This post explains how a civil lawsuit, and in the right case an award of punitive damages, can pursue accountability and deterrence beyond the criminal courts after an impaired-driving tragedy.
Since the Court of Appeal decided Bowman v Martineau, the case is often cited for the idea that damages in professional negligence are always measured by diminution in value. In this in-depth commentary, Paul Cahill argues that is a misreading and sets out how damages in these cases should actually be quantified, including when cost of repair, rather than diminution in value, is the right measure.
Anyone can start a medical malpractice lawsuit in Ontario, but very few succeed. Drawing on two decades representing patients against doctors and hospitals, Paul Cahill explains what you have to prove, whether a claim actually punishes the doctor, how long you have to sue, what it costs, what it is worth, and how long it takes.