The Vexing Problem Of Limitations In Environmental Cases Rises Again

Last August, we reported on recent case law dealing with the difficult question of how to determine limitation periods in environmental claims. In the January 2017 Court of Appeal decision of Crombie Property Holdings Limited v. McColl-Frontenac Inc., the court overturned the trial court's decision that the case was started too late on the basis of "palpable and overriding errors". The court's reasons included that the trial judge failed to look carefully at the factual circumstances of the plaintiff when determining when a plaintiff knew or ought to have known that it had a claim.

In this case, the plaintiff was in the midst of a transaction involving 22 properties, a fact which the trial judge did not mention in her reasons. The Court of Appeal took the view that a multi-property purchase with waiver of conditions was relevant to whether a reasonable person, after the waiver of conditions, would have sought out and obtained laboratory results that indicated