This course will use the standard Ontario Agreement of Purchase and Sale as a baseline to examine the leading academic issues and legal questions regarding real estate transactions in Ontario. We will focus on understanding how a real estate transaction works, the rights and obligations of the buyer and the seller of real estate, and the roles and obligations of the professionals involved in these transactions: the realtors, lawyers and mortgage brokers.
Course or Seminar Category: Business Law - Commercial and Contracts
Restitution
The law of restitution is the third branch – in addition to contract and tort – of the common law of obligations. An understanding of restitutionary doctrine is vitally important for potential litigators and commercial lawyers. Restitutionary issues can, however, arise in virtually every legal area. This course covers a number of topics – such as fiduciary obligation and constructive trust – that feature prominently in contemporary litigation both in commercial matters and in other aspects of private law, including family law.
The course organizes these materials in terms of a unifying theory of unjust enrichment and examines the relationship of restitution with the more familiar doctrines of tort, contract and property law. In so doing, the course fills in a number of gaps left by the first year contracts course and offers the student an overview of the entire field of civil liability.
Placing particular emphasis on Canadian materials which adopt the unjust enrichment theory, the course examines the more common instances of restitutionary recovery, benefits conferred under mistake, fraud or compulsion, in circumstances of necessity, or under transactions that are ineffective for such reasons as informality, incapacity, illegality, mistake, undue influence, unconscionability, frustration or breach. As well, consideration is given to the recovery of benefits acquired through wrongdoing whether criminal, tortious or in breach of a fiduciary duty.
Law & Social Change: Construction Law
Construction is one of the largest industries in Canada, contributing 7.5% to Canada’s GDP annually, and employing more than 1.4 million people. The construction industry is broad and multi-faceted. From residential construction including houses and condominiums to commercial construction, such as office towers and hotels to industrial and infrastructure development including hospitals, schools, roads, and transportation systems. In Toronto alone, the scale of current construction projects is evident from a simple look at the skyline. With recent changes to the Ontario legislation and large amounts of government funding being directed towards revitalizing provincial and federal infrastructure, now is the perfect time to study this area. Construction law is a rapidly growing specialized field which has developed into its own distinctive area of law. Not only does construction law have a rich jurisprudential history in Canada, it is also at the forefront of emerging alternative dispute resolution processes such as Dispute Review Boards and Adjudication. The industry is ordered by a complex web of private contracts, public laws and regulations, and a set of common law duties, unique to the industry in some instances. In this course, we will survey and examine the legal relationships between all stakeholders and the respective legal rights and remedies. The course will canvass the private law of contract, tort, real property, debtor-creditor, agency, administrative law and trusts. In addition, we will cover related topics concerning public law and legislation relating to sale of goods, personal property security, liens, trusts, and adjudication. This course will allow students to analyze construction law issues and apply these principles of law in a construction setting. Guest speakers will be invited to contribute to some discussions.
Legal Drafting
This course is designed to help students develop practical skills in drafting clear and effective legal documents. The focus will be on the form and substance of formal agreements supporting corporate and commercial transactions as well as certain dispute resolution scenarios. Students will work with document precedents, review, draft, revise, and discuss various legal documents. The work will include class discussions and take home assignments.
Individual Employment Relationship
This course offers an introduction to and comprehensive overview of employment law, which is the law (common law and statutory) governing the individual employment relationship. More than two-thirds of Canadian workers are not unionized; this course is about them and their employers. The goal of the course is to provide students with fluency in the theory, principles, doctrines and jurisprudence of the employee-employer relationship. Main topics include: the formation of an employment contract; express and implied contractual terms; workplace standards; employee and employer rights and obligations during employment, including human rights; the termination of the employment contract and the rights and obligations upon severance.
International Business Transactions
Course will cover the payment and financing of international business transactions with particular attention to the sale of goods. With various degrees of emphasis, coverage will consist of:
● Brief introduction to basic conflict of laws rules governing international commercial transactions
● Introduction to international commercial banking (deposit taking, bank and customer relationship, foreign currency and cross-border payment obligations and bank deposits; correspondent banking; foreign currency risks);
● International payments by wire;
● Principal aspects of the law governing documentary sales in international trade: delivery, passage of property and risk);
● From paper to Electronic and functional equivalence of electronic documents.
● Selected aspect pertaining to negotiable instruments as payment and credit instruments in international trade; and
● Payment and financing international trade transactions: documentary collections and letters of credit (and related banking instruments).
Course is appropriate to both second and third year students—there are neither prerequisites nor co-requisites.
While the focus of the course is payment and financing of international trade, this may be the only course offered on the JD level introducing students to the foundations of banking law needed for both domestic and international business transactions. It may also be the only course introducing students to transport documents (such as bills of lading) and their use in international transactions as well as the law that governs international transactions.
At the instructor’s discretion final mark may be adjusted by half a mark (or in extreme cases full mark) that may be taken away or added for class participation (including attendance — as well as leading class discussion as assigned in advance). Classes will be recorded – per the usual policy of the Law School.
Commercial Law
This course focuses on secured credit in lending, wholesale and retail sales transactions and touches upon related areas. Coverage includes a brief introduction to the law of sale of goods, insolvency, suretyships, and selected aspects of the law that govern securities transfers, mostly all in the context of secured credit. Most of the course will deal with the financing of commercial and consumer transactions, particularly secured credit under the Ontario Personal Property Security Act. The course will combine statutory interpretation and legal principles as they operate throughout commercial transactions.
Neither a prerequisite nor a co-requisite is required or recommended, and the course is appropriate for students who start their second year at Osgoode. Those who wish to take upper year business law courses are encouraged to take it quite early in their upper year law studies.
Bankruptcy & Insolvency Law
The lingering effect of Covid 19, supply chain challenges, war in Ukraine, inflation, tariff wars- the world is facing uncertain and challenging times. These challenges will effect financial stability of Canadian businesses and individuals. Some, no doubt, will become insolvent. How do we address the societal and practical consequences of these insolvencies?
Bankruptcy and insolvency laws provide a framework for restructuring or liquidating insolvent businesses or rehabilitating insolvent individuals.
This course will take a practical approach to reviewing the principal insolvency and restructuring regimes in Canadian law – bankruptcies, receiverships and restructuring under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act or the proposal provisions of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. In addition to learning the substantive and procedural rules with respect to each regime, we will consider the practical implications of insolvencies with respect to various stakeholders such a workers, retirees, pensioners, landlords and governments.
This course combines an analysis of the relevant statutory material and case law with an understanding of the policy choices in insolvencies, as well as the different roles which an insolvency system may play in contemporary society.
Taxation Law
This is not an accounting course. Neither is it a course singularly concerned with public finance. While income tax law is unavoidably concerned with public finance and tax accounting, there is so much more to it. The determinations of what is “income”, who is a “taxpayer”, which taxpayers pay which rates of income tax and the scope of tax deductions / credits carry profound socioeconomic implications. This course provides an introductory survey of income tax taking up the policy and technical dimensions of income tax with a central emphasis on the taxation of individuals. The course imparts knowledge relevant to core income tax concepts, financial literacy, recurring political debates (which often involve questions of taxation) and strategies for working within a complex statute.
The material for this course will be delivered in an lecture format. All assigned readings will be supplemented by detailed PowerPoint materials. These materials are not cryptic bullet point summaries of the readings. Instead, they are carefully prepared to bring greater context, organization and coherent explanation to assigned readings. All PowerPoint materials follow a disciplined, consistent and orderly format, breaking materials down by topic and sub-topic. The verbally delivered lecture content tracks very closely with the PowerPoint materials, adding further explanation, context and debate to these materials. If students scrutinize the readings, digest the supplementary PowerPoint materials and participate in lectures, they will be equipped to succeed in the course.
Taxation Law
Taxation Law is the foundational course in tax. It is one of the highly recommended courses for
students at Osgoode. It is intended for students who find tax issues intriguing or want to develop a stronger understanding of tax. It is also for those who are interested in the many substantive areas of law which invariably intersect with tax.
The course is a survey of the federal income tax system, with a focus on the taxation of individuals. Students will learn about the general framework of the Income Tax Act, come to appreciate the underlying principles and policies of the system, and develop statutory interpretation skills that will serve them well in practice.
Students are expected to prepare for classes by completing the assigned readings and reflecting on them. The amount of readings for the course is modest. Attendance is required.
The main reading material for the course is Li, Magee and Wilkie, Principles of Canadian Income Tax Law (10th edition). Students will have access to an electronic copy of this book. They may also obtain a hard copy from the publisher (Thomson Reuters) or the York University Library.