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ARTICLE · 14 APRIL 2016

Court Of Appeal Summaries (April 4-8, 2016)

Blaney McMurtry LLP
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In Howard v Benson Group, the Court again applied the correctness standard when interpreting an employment contract rather than the deferential Sattva standard.

CanadaLitigation, Mediation & Arbitration
John Polyzogopoulos
John Polyzogopoulos
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Hello Everyone.

This week was a busy one at the Court of Appeal. In two important decisions Deslauriers Custom Cabinets and Howard v Benson Group, the Court further chipped away at Sattva and the Supreme Court's pronouncement in that case that contractual interpretation is now an issue of mixed fact and law and therefore subject to a more deferential standard of review. In Deslauriers, which involved the interpretation of a commercial lease to determine whether it was the landlord or the tenant that bore the risk of fire loss, the Court applied a correctness standard rather than the deferential Sattva standard. In doing so, Justice Cronk relied on Sattva itself, which leaves room for the application of the correctness standard when there are "extricable" questions of law involved. "Extricable questions of law" include legal errors involving "the application of an incorrect principle, the failure to consider a required element of a legal test, or the failure to

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