LIMITATIONS PERIODS, CAPACITY, STANDING, PARTIES

LIMITATIONS PERIODS, CAPACITY, STANDING, PARTIES

LIMITATION PERIODS

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  Front door to the civil justice system: provide by when a person is required to bring a claim
  
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  Purposes: There are three, and they may be described as the certainty, evidentiary, and diligence rationales (Piexero v Haberman):
  
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     Certainty:
    
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      a potential defendant should be secure in his reasonable expectation that he will not be held to account for ancient obligations
      
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    Evidentiary: 
    
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      Once the limitation period has lapsed, a potential defendant should no longer be concerned about the preservation of evidence relevant to the claim. Claims should not be brought upon “stale” evidence
      
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    Diligence:
    
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      Plaintiffs are expected to act diligently and not “sleep on their rights”; statutes of limitation are an incentive for plaintiffs to bring suit in a timely fashion.
      
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  Basic limitation period
  in Ontario is two years from when the claim is “discovered” by plaintiff (Limitation Act s. 4)
  
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    “Unless this Act provides otherwise, a proceeding shall not be commenced in respect of a claim after the second anniversary of the day on which the claim was discovered”
    

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  Note, a person will be presumed to have known of the matters on the day the act/omission took place unless the contrary is proven (Limitation Act s. 5(2)
  

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  Piexeiro v. Haberman where injury, loss, or damage is an element of a cause of action or claim, a limitation period can only commence when the person with the claim (1) suffers some injury, loss, or damage, and (2) said injury, loss, or damage actually is discoverable, in the sense that a reasonable person in the circumstances, with the same abilities of the plaintiff, would have discovered it.
  
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    The discoverability principle applies to avoid the injustice of precluding an action before the person is able to sue. Time under [provision at issue] does not begin to run until it is reasonably discoverable that the injury meets the threshold [other provision at issue]. It was agreed that the respondents first learned of the herniated disc in June 1993. The respondents were reasonably diligent in this respect, and it cannot be said that they ought to have discovered the serious nature of the damage earlier. As the action was commenced in July a year later within the limitation period, it cannot be statute-barred.
    
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  Crombie v. McColl-Frontenac Inc. (purchased contaminated property, previous neighbour was a gas station): cannot equate knowledge of potential damage with knowledge of actual damage (also available knowledge does not equal actual knowledge); must consider context (e.g. nature of transaction, waivers) in assessing what plaintiff knew or ought to have known
  
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  Only defendant can raise the limitation period, though does not have to (e.g. situation similar to Choc v Hudbay, government in historical cases involving Indigenous groups)