Supreme Court Grants Leave To Appeal In Securities Class Actions

The Supreme Court of Canada announced today that it will hear appeals in a trilogy of Ontario securities class action cases: Green v. CIBC, Silver v. IMAX and Celestica v. Millwright Regional Council of Ontario Pension Trust Fund.

All three of these cases address how the three year limitation period under the Ontario Securities Act applicable to secondary market class actions should be applied. In order to bring a secondary market class action under the Ontario Securities Act, a plaintiff must first obtain leave of the court and, pursuant to section 138.14, the action must be commenced within three years. In 2012, the Ontario Court of Appeal interpreted this limitation period to mean that plaintiffs must obtain leave from the court to commence the action within the three year period (Sharma v. Timminco). This decision was generally welcomed by defendants but attracted much concern among plaintiffs' class action counsel. Earlier this year, in Green v. CIBC, a rare