Carriage Motions: What Is The Preferred Form Of A Class Action?

To paraphrase Justice Perrell, a carriage motion has aspects of a casting call or a rehearsal for certification, whereby competing plaintiff counsel submit that their proposed class action and plan will best serve the interests of class members¹.

Carriage motions also provide insight into what the Courts view as preferred forms of a class action as they are asked to choose between the options before them. Ultimately, carriage decisions reflect judicial thinking on what serves the best interests of class members, is fair to defendants, and fulfils the Class Proceedings Act's underlying objectives of promoting access to justice, behaviour modification, and judicial economy.

Carriage motion jurisprudence has most recently been developing in the area of securities class actions; i.e. in Sino-Forest and Armtec². In these two cases, the Courts focused on the relative nature and scope of the competing class actions, the theories advanced by counsel in support of the