{"id":1166,"date":"2021-12-31T11:03:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T15:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2021-12-31T11:03:54","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T15:03:54","slug":"ontario-common-law-discovery-doesnt-apply-to-rta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/?p=1166","title":{"rendered":"Ontario: common law discovery doesn’t apply to s. 57 of the RTA"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Sharma v. Sandhu<\/em><\/a>, the Divisional Court held that the common law discovery rule has no application to s. 57 of the Residential Tenancies Act<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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[<\/a>19]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I am also not persuaded that the common law principle of discoverability has any application when considering\u00a0s. 57<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0RTA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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[<\/a>20]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0At para. 37 of\u00a0Peixeiro v. Haberman<\/i>\u00a01997 CanLII 325 (SCC)<\/a>, [1997] S.C.J.\u00a0 No. 31 the Supreme Court of Canada held that the discoverability rule is an interpretative tool for the construing of limitations statutes and ought to be considered each time a limitations provision is in issue. The court adopted the following passage from\u00a0Fehr v. Jacob<\/i>\u00a0(1993)\u00a01993 CanLII 4407 (MB CA)<\/a>, 14 C.C.L.T. (2d) 200 (Man. C.A.):<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2026When time runs from the \u201caccrual of the cause of action\u201d or from some other event which can be construed as occurring only when the injured party has knowledge of the injury sustained, the judge-made discoverability rule applies.\u00a0 But, when time runs from an event which clearly occurs without regard to the injured party\u2019s knowledge, the judge-made discoverability rule may not extend the period the legislature has prescribed.<\/p>\n

[<\/a>21]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Section 57(2)<\/a>\u00a0sets the time from which the clock runs from a precise event, namely, the date the tenant vacates the rental unit. The starting of the clock is in no way dependent upon the state of the tenant\u2019s knowledge. It follows that the discoverability rule cannot be used as proposed by the appellants to extend the one-year period prescribed by the legislature.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s odd that the Court relied on Peixeiro <\/em>instead of Pioneer<\/a>, <\/em>which is about 22 years more current and the leading decision on common law discovery.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Sharma v. Sandhu, the Divisional Court held that the common law discovery rule has no application to s. 57 of the Residential Tenancies Act: [19]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0I am also not persuaded that the common law principle of discoverability has any application when considering\u00a0s. 57\u00a0of the\u00a0RTA. [20]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0At para. 37 of\u00a0Peixeiro v. … Continue reading Ontario: common law discovery doesn’t apply to s. 57 of the RTA<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[625,392,623,624],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ontario","tag-common-law-discovery","tag-common-law-principles","tag-ontario-residential-tenancies-act","tag-ontario-residential-tenancies-act-s-57"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1168,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}