This course will provide a survey of key issues relating to trusts and trustees. The topics to be covered include: the juridical nature of the trust as a distinctive legal relationship, the reasons for which trusts are established (or come into existence by operation of law), the means by which trusts are established, and the different species of trusts, including express trusts, purpose trusts, constructive trusts and resulting trusts, and issues relating to trustee duties. Some equitable doctrines beyond the trust proper may be covered if time permits.
Course or Seminar Category: Tort - Restitution and Private Law
Trusts
This course will provide a survey of key issues relating to trusts and trustees. The topics to be covered include: the juridical nature of the trust as a distinctive legal relationship, the reasons for which trusts are established (or come into existence by operation of law), the means by which trusts are established, the different species of trusts, including express trusts, purpose trusts, constructive trusts and resulting trusts, and issues relating to trustee duties.
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.
Advanced Torts
This course will focus on injuries to relational interests, including negligent and/or intentional interference with family relationships, economic relationships, and community relationships. Topics covered may include the torts of intimidation, conspiracy, inducing breach of contract, defamation and invasion of privacy, and liability for economic loss from negligence. Each area of tort law doctrine will be studied in context. This will involve exploration of various jurisprudential perspectives on tort law including law and economics, critical legal studies, feminist legal theory and critical race theory.
Insurance Law
Are personal injury lawyers ambulance chasers? Are insurance companies only interested in denying claims and generating profits for their shareholders? There are many misconceptions about the insurance industry despite the important role that insurance law plays in regulating so many areas of our lives. Through this course, students will achieve a better understanding of the role that an insurance law lawyer plays in advancing and defending claims arising out of a motor vehicle collision, a slip and fall accident, or a long term disability claim. Through a case study approach, student simulations and by attending litigation events involving real litigants, students will experience first-hand the application of insurance law and procedure. This will also involve an analysis of the Rules of Civil Procedure, the Rules of the Licence Appeal Tribunal (LAT) and case law generated by the Financial Services Commission of Ontario, the License Appeal Tribunal and multiple levels of the Superior Court of Justice.
Students are required to participate in one of the following insurance litigation events throughout the term: an examination for discovery, a mediation session, a LAT case conference, a LAT Hearing, a pre-trial hearing and a day of trial. The course instructor will facilitate this process. Students will be required to prepare a paper of 5 pages at the end of their real world litigation experience.
Note: As a result of COVID-19 restrictions, attendance at a litigation event will be modified for the Fall 2022 semester. You may be required to participate virtually.