
Legal Blog:
Hard Cases
There is an adage in the legal profession: hard cases make bad law (i.e. the sympathy factor seems to have induced judges to make bad decisions on the law simply to achieve a particular result). The problem is that the law set out in these decisions cannot be ignored and influence cases in which the sympathy factor is no longer present. Toronto-Dominion Bank v. Valentine Estate, a 2002 decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, is one such case.
Continue Reading >Please Release Me
When is a release not a release? The answer to this question depends on which panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal you ask. In each of the cases we will discuss below, there was a standard clause in the release by which the plaintiff agreed to not “make any claim or take any proceedings against any person or corporation or other entity who might claim contribution or indemnity from” the defendant. The releases in each of the two cases were almost identical. The substance of the releases was identical.
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