Is a party to a contract obligated to mitigate its damages at the same time that it is asking the court to order specific performance? Since the party wants the contract performed, not damages for non-performance, the obligation to mitigate seems to be totally inapplicable. Yet, in Southcott Estates Inc. v. Toronto Catholic District School [...]

The recent decision of the Australia High Court in Andrews v. Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. is important for the building industry.  While it dealt with a banking contract, the principles it applied are directly relevant to building contracts.  The central decision in Andrews v. ANZ is that the doctrine prohibiting contractual penalties [...]

A clause obliging the insurer to defend an insured, or pay for the insured’s defence, is a well know feature of liability insurance policies. Recently, some Canadian courts have held that the duty of one party to defend or pay for defence of another party to the contract may arise in contracts outside the field [...]

The Ontario Court of Appeal has just released an important decision upholding an arbitration award under NAFTA against Mexico.  This decision shows that Canadian courts will be reluctant to interfere on jurisdictional grounds with the remedial decisions of international commercial arbitrations. In The United Mexican States v. Cargill, Incorporated, Mexico opposed the recognition in Ontario [...]