Background & purpose of the system 1 basic institutions, processes, and players 3

Hollick TEST

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  Mandatory and conjunctive test, always also informed by notions of efficiency, access to justice, and behaviour modification
  
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  CPA s. 5(1): The court shall certify a class proceeding on a motion […] if,
  
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    (a) the pleadings or the notice of the application discloses a cause of action (e.g. factual basis in statement of claim);
    
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      Hollick: low threshold, we assume the facts pleaded to be true- question is do those facts make out a legally cognizable cause of action?
      
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    (b) there is an identifiable class of two or more that would be represented by representative plaintiff or defendant;
    
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      Hollick: reliance on “objective criteria” is appropriate but will not necessarily describe an
      

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  Can be determined “without reference to the merits of the action”
  
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  Don’t need to precisely identify each and every member, but need to identify the class with enough specificity that someone later trying to claim can figure out whether they are a member
  
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    Here: a person was found to be a member of the class if he or she owned or occupied property inside the specified area within a specified period of time.
    
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    e.g experienced same phenomenon at same time and place, or purchased certain product during a specified period
    
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  (c) the claims or defences of the class members raise common issues;
  
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    Hollick: an issue will not be “common” in the requisite sense unless it is a “substantial ingredient”of each of the class members claims, in the sense that it’s resolution is necessary to the resolution of each of such
    
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      Should be sufficiently clear there were others besides the appellant that were concerned about the issue
      
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      In Hollick u some difficulty here. Noise and pollution complaints from over 30k people in Toronto were seen as likely too disparate to be considered common in this circumstance (was nuisance action- and how noise and pollution affected people in different areas varied wildly)
      
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      Note, in Rumley, the SCC showed a willingness to certify class actions where many plaintiffs (students at residential school for deaf/blind children) suffered over an extended period of time (sexual abuse), during which standards of care may have changed, and the common issues spanning through time were not necessarily exact
      
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        Here, “the common issues predominated over those affecting only individual class members”. The central issue in the suit was the nature of the duty owed to the class members by the school, and whether the duty was breached. Issues of injury and causation would be required to be litigated individually, though such could only occur following resolution of the common issues.
        
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  (d) a class proceeding would be the preferable procedure for resolution of the common issues; and
  
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    Inquiry directed at two questions Rumley; Hollick:
    
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      (1) whether the class proceeding would be a fair, efficient and manageable method of advancing the claim
      
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      (2) whether the class proceeding would be preferable in the sense of preferable to other procedures, such as joinder, test cases and consolidation
      
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    Hollick: inquiry should be conducted through the lens of the three principal advantages of class actions
    
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      Note: This is where the Hollick case failed
      
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  3 Principal Advantages of Class Proceedings (Hollick):
  
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