Commercial Litigation and Dispute Resolution Blog

We are now several years into the “culture shift” encouraging summary dispositions rather than trials, following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Hryniak v Mauldin.^[1] Commentary from the Alberta Court of Appeal suggests that this shift has indeed resulted in an increase in the number of cases that have been decided under the summary judgment rules in ...

This post discusses the Alberta Court of Appeal's recent decision in Hannam v. Medicine Hat School District No. 76,^[1] which stands as an emphatic reminder that the Supreme Court of Canada has directed courts to grant summary judgment when a fair and just determination can be made without a trial.

Although Hannam does not change the law of summary judgment, it conveys the ...

On February 6, 2019, the Alberta Court of Appeal delivered its much anticipated decision in Weir-Jones Technical Services Incorporated v Purolator Courier Ltd, 2019 ABCA 49 (Weir-Jones). The decision provides clarification and guidance on two topics in which competing lines of authority had recently emerged in Alberta: (1) the correct standard of proof for summary ...

In an earlier blog post, we reviewed what the Supreme Court of Canada heralded as a “shift in culture” in Hryniak v. Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7 with respect to the availability of summary judgment.  While we had expected BC Courts to therefore be even more receptive to summary adjudications than they had in past, there was some initial hesitation in Alberta given the difference ...