I completed my Juris Doctor from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2018. I was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2019, and have practiced law since. As a lawyer, I have a special interest in crown liability, and I have had the privilege of being involved in high-profile inmate abuse cases before the Superior Court of Justice and at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. In addition to actively litigating, I completed graduate studies in law. In 2024, I completed my LLM from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. In research completed as part of my LLM program, under the guidance of Professor Kent Roach, in my article Palpable and Enforceable: A Normative Framework for a Stronger Damages Remedy under Section 24(1) of the Charter, published in Queen’s University Law Journal, I propose a normative framework for enhancing the damages remedy under section 24 of the Charter. In other research at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, I dissect whether the many ways that similarly situated plaintiffs are treated differently under the law and in recovering general damages can be reconciled in one, existing theory of tort law. This research, and my practice, provide the impetus for my proposed research in my doctoral dissertation
Research
There is a legal principle that damages in civil actions are meant to restore the status quo ante by making the plaintiff whole for the loss caused by the tort-feasor and tort in question. If this is indeed the purpose of damages in tort law, then similarly situated plaintiffs should recover similarly under the law. This is because plaintiffs who are similarly situated viz their injuries, would have incurred or sustained a similar damage, and the amount to make said plaintiffs whole should be about the same among each member of the group. This treating of similarly situated plaintiffs similarly would be consistent with the principle of stare decisis.
However, this is not how damages practically work in the tort context. There are numerous circumstances wherein similarly situated plaintiffs will recover differently for their injuries. To illustrate, I define similarly situated plaintiffs as tort-victims whose injuries and actual damages are similar or nearly identical. For example, four or five plaintiffs all of whom were employed at the material time earning a similar income sustain a fracture to their right leg as a result of a tort incident: Plaintiff “A” sustained their injury in a motor vehicle accident for which they are not at fault; Plaintiff “B” through no fault of their own slipped and fell on ice in a private parking lot owned by a solvent private party; Plaintiff “C”, through no fault of their own fell on ice on a municipal sidewalk; and finally, Plaintiff “D” sustained their injury on a municipal sidewalk as a result of a physical attack perpetuated by either an identified or random unidentified wrongdoer.
Notwithstanding that plaintiffs “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” sustained similar injuries and that it would cost the same amount to make each of them “whole” within the principle of damages, plaintiffs “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” will recover very differently from one another. This treating of similarly situated plaintiffs differently raises issues of equality among plaintiffs. I call this the damages phenomenon.
My dissertation project will explore, having regard to the damages phenomenon, the relationship between damages, equality and responsibility in tort theory. The exploration is whittled to the following sub-questions: (a) Does the phenomenon pose a problem for tort theory and if so, what is the nature of the problem? Does tort theory explain, contribute to or justify the damages phenomenon, and if so how?
Because damages are ordinarily the main objective of tort litigation, the damages henomenon presents a real issue with tangible consequences for some faultless plaintiffs who may be forced to bear their own costs of an accident. Moreover, the damages phenomenon that restores some plaintiffs, while leaving others less than whole is – on its face – off putting, and it is inconsistent with (a) the make-whole conception of damages, and (b) principles of equality pervasive in the application of law. If the damages phenomenon is justified in tort law, then we should know why and how. To this end, we must examine whether tort law is practically working to do what it is theoretically supposed to do. This is the object of my dissertation.