The Lawyers Weekly - March 4, 2011

Quebec public lawyers forced back to work

Highlights

E-CONTRACTS
EXECUTOR’S
INSURANCE
LAWSUIT

Contracting electronically in employment

PAGE 9

Protecting executors from personal liability

PAGE 15

PAGE 21

SCC sets out framework for unjust enrichment claims in family law

MERGERS

CRISTIN SCHMITZ OTTAWA

The Supreme Court has issued a new roadmap for navigating property disputes between unmarried domestic partners, including scrapping as “ doctrinally unsound” the “common intention” resulting trust it recognized 36 years ago.

Justice Thomas Cromwell’s
7-0 judgment, in companion
cases from British Columbia and
Ontario, clarifies and updates the
analytical framework for decid-
ing unjust enrichment claims in
domestic property cases, while at
the same time tracing (and argu-
ably putting some new glosses
on) the top court’s decisions on
the property disputes of com-
mon-law couples dating back to
Pettkus v. Becker, [1980] S.C.J.
No. 103 .

Among other things, Kerr v.

Baranow and Vanasse v. Seguin
settle: conflicting case law from
the West and Ontario on how to
quantify unjust enrichment mon-
etary awards; how jurists analyz-
ing unjust enrichment claims by
common-law spouses should take
account of the mutual benefits
partners confer on each other;
and the role that the parties’
intentions and expectations play
in the unjust enrichment analysis.

The “must-read” judgment offers convenient “one-stop shopping” for lawyers bringing, or defending, domestic unjust enrichment claims, says Geoffrey Gomery of Vancouver’s Nathanson, Schachter and Thompson.

“The judg-
ment is clearly
intended as a primer for trial
lawyers and trial judges,” he told
The Lawyers Weekly. “And it is
significant that the Supreme
Court has definitively stated that
the common intention resulting
trust is no more.”
(Such resulting trusts required
proof that the ex-partners com-
monly intended that the property
legally owned by one spouse was
to be shared by both.)

Gomery, who was co-counsel with Armand Petronio for the appellant Margaret Kerr of B.C., noted that the judgment packs an

See Kerr Page 27

Gomery

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002

More law firm mergers likely in future

PAGE 22

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