Source: https://davidcheifetz.ca/category/rhetoric/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 00:59:25+00:00

Document:
This comment was on CanLII Connects for a time. The CanLII PtB thought the tone wasn’t sufficiently respectful and wanted me to explain, in more detail, what I saw as the problems with the Sacks decision. I wasn’t prepared to change or add, so I removed the comment.
I have fixed some syntax issues and the English translation of the German quotation. Otherwise, it is the same. I haven’t added to or changed the meaning of what was in the CanLII Connects comment.
See https://davidcheifetz.ca/2017/10/23/the-canadian-law-pauli-awards/ for the version I wrote for here. There is some repetition.
The ONCA earns a full Pauli for its frolic of law in Sacks v Ross, 2017 ONCA 773.
7. ultimately, the Sacks panel found that the alleged errors made by the trial judge didn’t affect the correctness of the jury’s decision so that the appeal was dismissed.
Which research lawyer is to blame?
Why did the panel refer to Linden, Canadian Tort Law, but not Klar, Tort Law? The Linden text may not “use the word [necessary] in [its] specification of the [but-for] test.” The Klar text does. More than 20 times in chapter 11 (the causation chapter) of the 5th edition. I don’t have the 6th edition of Klar published a few months ago at my finger tips to do a similar count.
What about the other previous ONCA decisons, since Clements, accepting the Clements ratio that a but-for cause is a necessary cause?
What happens if the jury asks the judge if the negligence has to be necessary or sufficient?
Are counsel going to be told they can’t use the word “necessary” when making submissions to the jury about the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence? When asking questions of the witnesses?
Can a causative factor be a “real and substantial connection” without being necessary connection?
What does “real” mean? Is that the opposite of “unreal”? Are we now in the realm of “abstract metaphysical theory” when discussing the meaning of “real and substantial”?
Is a minor necessary connection a “real and substantial connection.”?
A real and substantial connection would be something that “materially contributed”, right? It needn’t be anything more, right? But it is certainly is something that falls outside the de minimis range, right? Sound familiar; albeit something you’ve not heard as an acceptable explanation for factual causation, in Ontario, for quite some time?
Anybody smell the the odour of Athey material contribution to injury?
But Athey MCI is supposed to be defunct, right?
Ignatius of Loyala is reputed to have said: “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” All of the Sacks panel necessarily spent most of their careers as practitioners, far more than 7 years, while Athey MCI ruled Ontario: see Alderson v. Callaghan, 40 OR (3d) 136, 1998 CanLII 895 (ONCA) and Mizzi v. Hopkins, 64 OR (3d) 365, 2003 CanLII 52145 (ONCA) where the doctrine came to be called “contributory causation”. Loyola’s saying might be true for Jesuit training. It’s not supposed to be true for judicial training, alliteration notwithstanding.
But, now that I think of it, perhaps the search for the meaning of “real and substantial” in the phrase “real and substantial connection” could be combined with a search for the meaning of “gross” in the phrase “gross negligence”. Or, better, a search for the meaning of “common” in the phrase “common sense” (or the portmanteau ‘commonsense’ as it is often written elsewhere in the English-speaking world).
The President of the Surujdeo panel was Strathy CJO. You think he’ll be impressed at the impending need to empanel a 5 judge panel? If you’re an ambitious trial judge asked to chose between the decisions of the Sacks and Surujdeo panels, which do you chose?
As Jon Stewart used to say: ‘just sayin’.
I might, in due course, write something (with even more snark) about this case on my currently moribund blog: http://www.davidcheifetz.ca. However, it’s really “not my job” anymore – if that sounds like “he doesn’t care very much” you’re right – so that depends on whether I can convince somebody whose job it is to say what ought to be said. Those of you who don’t know why I am disinclined should look at the last few pages of my last article on this area of the law. It’s in (2013) 41 Advocates Quarterly. If you know enough to get here, you know enough to find that too.
As I mentioned, the panel didn’t cite any precedents, show any antecedents, etc., for the “real and substantial connection” claim [see . Those of you who have bothered to go to my blog will have seen the BCSC “substantial connection” mantra. Coincidentally, there’s yet another very recent BCSC decisoin from a trial judge who should know better. This one is: Zwinge v Neylan, 2017 BCSC 1861 (CanLII), <http://canlii.ca/t/h6prx>. See -, especially . If BC jurisprudence is the source of the “real and substantial connection” theory, shouldn’t the panel have mentioned that, too?
“In most negligence cases, the causal connection between the defendant’s negligent conduct and the plaintiff’s injury is established by the application of the so-called “but for” test. If it can be proved, on the balance of probabilities, that the plaintiff’s injury would not have occurred but for the defendant’s negligent conduct, the causal connection is established. Stated in other words, if the defendant’s conduct can be shown to have been a necessary cause of the plaintiff’s harm, conduct which made a difference to the plaintiff’s status quo ante, the “but for” test is satisfied.” (Klar, Tort Law, 6th, text associated with footnote 11; footnote omitted here).
Isn’t that paragraph at least one good reason why good scholarship required the Sacks panel to also refer at least to Klar? Or at least acknowledge the existence of other Canadian treatises on tort law which could be read to assert a contrary conclusion?
My recollection of what’s in Linden’s text is that there are other sections discussing the but-for test which make it clear enough that the meaning of but-for used in that test is “necessary”; and, that the same position is stated in Fridman et al, The Law of Torts in Canada and Osborne, The Law of Torts. I’ll check that over the next few days as is convenient for me. Now, of course, the mere fact that all of these eminent authors say “X” and the ONCA says “Y” doesn’t mean the Sacks panel is wrong – it also doesn’t mean the moon isn’t made out of green cheese – but it does make one wonder, doesn’t it? Especially since the panel saw fit not to mention any of these.
A panel of the ONCA deserves a PAULI Award for its frolic of law on proof of factual causation in Sacks v. Ross, 2017 ONCA 773 (CanLII), <http://canlii.ca/t/h6hsc>.
Why PAULI? It’s the closest analogy I could think of to the Darwin Awards: the idea being that the decision will not have descendants – i.e., will not be a precedent – so it has, in that sense, killed itself without progeny by eliminating itself from the legal equivalent of the gene pool.
The explanation for the award should tell you my view of the merits of the panel’s analysis of factual causation law principles.
Some readers will know that wrote a comment on that decision. It was available elsewhere on the web for a time. I have deleted it, for now. It will eventually reappear here, within a week or so, perhaps with some additions.
In the meantime, if you really really really need that commentary in the meantime, email me.
1. In January 2017 the ONCA in Surujdeo v Melady, 2017 ONCA 41 clearly, expressly, specifically, etc., dealt with the issue the Sacks panel decided, AND that earlier panel came to the opposite conclusion. (Take a look at the name of the president of the Surujdeo panel.) The judges on that panel had before them, considered, and approved the analysis of the law as set out by and applied by the trial judge in Sacks. The discussion starts at . The discussion isn’t obiter. The issue of what and how to instruct the jury on factual causation in negligence, what the questions to the jury were to be, was the issue in Surujdeo. Surujdeo is a medical malpractice action with multiple defendants tried with a jury. (The plaintiffs succeeded at trial. The appeal was dismissed.) Nonetheless, it isn’t mentioned at all in Sacks even though Sacks cites Surujdeo as authority on a separate issue. This means we have the procedural issue of whether it was open to the panel to validly undertake the analysis in the manner that it did, regardless of what the proper decision was.
That comment goes right to the issue of the merits of the panel’s analysis of the law governing proof of factual causation, including the questions and instructions to be given a jury.
3. The seeming claim by the Sacks panel that, essentially, medical malpractice claims with multiple wrongdoers are somehow different in principle, not just more factually complex, requiring not just a more careful analysis but somehow a different analysis in principle than other less complex cases, medical negligence and otherwise. That claim includes this assertion.
I think there’s room to disagree on that claim but decide for yourself. Let’s start, and stop, here, with Benhaim v. St‑Germain and Ediger v. Johnston,  2 S.C.R. 98, 2013 SCC 18 on the medical malpractice side. For other types of case, let’s use Bow Valley Husky (Bermuda) Ltd. v. Saint John Shipbuilding Ltd.,  3 SCR 1210, 1997 CanLII 307 (SCC).
When I last checked, Ontario, like Quebec and BC, was still part of Canada, both geographically and politically.
I realize I’ve yet to say what it is the panel asserted that is so wrong.
1. Did the trial proceed on a correct understanding of causation in negligence cases?
2. Were the jury questions and the jury instructions on causation legally correct?
3. Did any legal error in the jury questions or the jury instructions deprive the appellants of a fair trial?
Beyond that? Read the decision. I’m trying to maintain some standards, here, for now.
I did write never say never.
I now return to my currently scheduled life.
Those who gods would destroy they sometimes give more money than the person will ever be able to use in that person’s lifetime.
Or they sometimes make that person wealthy as the result of ze’s creation of a fungible product that has no intrinsic value whatsoever to society and could equally be replaced by something equally valueless, where ze just happened to be one of the first kids on the block.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.