Claims against real estate lawyers, agents, and other professionals whose negligence causes loss in a property transaction.
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.
When a homeowner takes on a major renovation, they can step into the legal shoes of a builder, and the duties that come with it cannot be signed away in a standard form contract. In Oliva v Dickson, 2025 ONSC 6666, the court mapped the intersection of contract, the Ontario Building Code, and the duty owed to later purchasers. The decision draws on Breen v Lake of Bays and Wesley v Geneau, two matters in which Davidson Cahill Morrison LLP acted for the successful parties.
Ontario has four licensed title insurers, and unlike in the United States, no regulator standardizes what their policies say. Having acted for homeowners insured by each of them, the firm’s insurance litigation group has seen how a difference of two or three words can decide a future claim. The harder question is for the lawyers selling these policies at closing: on what basis is that choice being made?
When a real estate lawyer orders a title insurance policy for a client, are they quietly stepping into the role of an insurance agent? Read against the Insurance Act’s definition of “agent” and the fact that lawyers are not members of the Registered Insurance Brokers of Ontario, the question is sharper than it looks, and it is one reason a homeowner should not rely on the lawyer who sold the policy to tell them whether they have a claim under it.
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.