{"id":777,"date":"2018-06-18T17:57:22","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T21:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/?p=777"},"modified":"2018-06-18T17:57:22","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T21:57:22","slug":"ontario-amendments-are-subject-to-time-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/?p=777","title":{"rendered":"Ontario: amendments are subject to time-bars"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Lucky Star Developments Inc. v. ABSA Canada International<\/em><\/a>, the Court of Appeal rejected the doubtful argument that because the basic limitation period applies to the commencement of proceedings, it does not apply to proceedings that have already been commenced, and therefore does not bar amendments under r. 26.01:<\/p>\n

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[<\/a>7]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In oral submissions, the appellant argued that\u00a0s. 4<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Limitations Act<\/em>\u00a02002<\/a>, S.O. 2002, c. 24, Sched. B does not apply to proceedings that have already been commenced, and so does not bar amendments under r. 26.01. We disagree. As the court noted in\u00a0Joseph<\/em>, the rules must be read in light of the Act and its purpose in establishing a basic limitation period in\u00a0s. 4<\/a>. Amendments adding claims after the limitation period has expired constitute prejudice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Though it’s\u00a0 plain this argument was bound to fail\u2014it would mean there is no limitation of new claims asserted in already-commenced proceedings\u2014it’s a symptom of the conceptual difficulties that arises from the language “proceeding in respect of a claim”.<\/p>\n

The jurisprudence seems to have settled on “proceeding” having the same meaning as it does under the\u00a0Rules.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>Rule\u00a01.03 defines \u201cproceeding\u201d to include an action and an application, and the Court of Appeal has applied this definition to the term \u201cproceeding\u201d as used in the Limitations Act<\/em>: see e.g. Giglio v. Peters<\/em><\/a>, 2009 ONCA 681 at paras. 21-22 [\u201cGiglio<\/em>\u201d]. See also Guillemette v. Doucet<\/em>, 2007 ONCA 743<\/a> at para. 20.<\/p>\n

Strictly applied, this means that s. 4 bars actions or applications commenced in respect of a claim.\u00a0\u00a0A proposed amendment to add a claim to an existing action is of course not a proposal to commence a new action.\u00a0 I’ve argued before that the solution to this tension is\u00a0to\u00a0abandon a\u00a0narrow definition of \u201cproceeding\u201d and to define the commencement of a proceeding broadly enough to include amending a pleading to introduce a new claim.<\/p>\n

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

In Lucky Star Developments Inc. v. ABSA Canada International, the Court of Appeal rejected the doubtful argument that because the basic limitation period applies to the commencement of proceedings, it does not apply to proceedings that have already been commenced, and therefore does not bar amendments under r. 26.01: [7]\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In oral submissions, the … Continue reading Ontario: amendments are subject to time-bars<\/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":[297,190,300,474,36,162],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ontario","tag-adding-a-claim","tag-civil-procedure","tag-glitches-in-factual-matrices","tag-ontario-rules-of-civil-procedure-r-26-01","tag-pleading","tag-pleadings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","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=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":778,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/limitations.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}