Suing On Unpaid Invoices: Don't Wait Too Long

Over the last few years, we discussed a series of Ontario Court of Appeal decisions in this newsletter in which the court held that despite having become aware of a claim more than two years ago, the claimant had not "discovered" its claim for the purposes of the Limitations Act because the person with the claim did not know that a proceeding would be an appropriate means to seek to remedy it.

In Presley v. Van Dusen, 2019 ONCA 66, which we wrote about here, the Court of Appeal held that legal proceedings against an expert professional were not appropriate if the claim arose out of the professional's alleged wrongdoing but could be resolved by the professional himself or herself without recourse to the courts. In that case, which concerned the failed installation of a septic system, the contractor kept assuring the owners that the problem could be readily fixed and that he would fix it. The owners reasonably relied on those assurances, which led them to the