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ARTICLE · 09 JANUARY 2020

Is Your Refrigerator Limitation Period Running? Maybe Not Where One Party Promises To Fix The Problem

McMillan LLP
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A contractor installs some equipment for an owner. The equipment doesn't work. Over the next two years

CanadaLitigation, Mediation & Arbitration
Jeremy Rankin
Jeremy Rankin
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A contractor installs some equipment for an owner. The equipment doesn't work. Over the next two years, the contractor promises to fix the equipment on a number of occasions, but never does. A year later, the owner starts a claim. It's now been three years since the problem arose. Unfortunately for the owner, its claim is out of time, right? Not exactly.

In two recent decisions, the Court of Appeal clarified that the limitation period under the Ontario Limitations Act1 does not run while one party is reasonably relying on the other to remedy the problem between them. This stems from s. 5(1)(a)(iv) of the Act which reads as follows:

(1)  A claim is discovered on the earlier of,

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