(March 13, 2012)

Jayson Thomas recently defeated an appeal launched by the Chief of Police and a Toronto police officer, both of whom were represented by senior counsel from a large Bay Street law firm.

Jayson's client, Ronald Phipps, brought a human rights complaint against the Toronto Police Services Board, the Chief of Police and a Toronto police officer for racial discrimination. Mr. Phipps, self-represented at the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, proved that he was the target of racial discrimination when he was stopped by Toronto police officers while he was lawfully carrying out his duties as a Canada Post letter carrier in Toronto's affluent Bridle Path neighbourhood. The evidence before the Tribunal was that the officers were on the lookout for white Eastern European men in a van, suspected of cutting telephone lines in the area. Instead, it was Mr. Phipps - a black male wearing a Canada Post uniform and carrying a mail satchel - who caught the attention of the officers. The Human Rights Tribunal found that Mr. Phipps skin colour was a factor in the officers' treatment of him.

The Toronto Police Services Board, the Chief of Police, and one of the officers involved launched a judicial review application before the Ontario Divisional Court, seeking to overturn the Tribunal's decision. At that point, Mr. Phipps retained Jayson Thomas to respond to the application. In a 185 paragraph decision, a majority of the 3 Judge panel of the Divisional Court upheld the Tribunal's decision. This case raised a host of complex legal issues, including the appropriate test to be applied to cases involving racial discrimination and the standard of review to be applied to Human Rights Tribunal Decisions - which was decided in this case for the very first time under new Human Rights legislation in Ontario. Accordingly, this decision was reported in the Dominion Law Reports and the Administrative Law Reports, as well as several media sources throughout the country.

The Chief of Police and the Toronto police officer subsequently appealed the Divisional Court's decision to the highest level of Court in Ontario. On March 13, 2012, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the Divisional Court's decision in its entirety. The Divisional Court's decision has since been cited more than 20 times by decision makers and now stands as a precedent setting case.

To read the Divisional Court's decision click here.
To read the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision click here.

(September 27, 2011)

Jayson Thomas successfully argued against an injunction motion brought by a commercial tenant seeking to restrain the landlord from selling the tenant's business equipment by way of distraint. By the time the landlord sought to exercise its right to distrain the tenant's goods, a significant amount of arrears of rent had accrued. The Judge hearing the injunction motion refused to grant relief to the tenant, finding that the tenant had failed to raise a serious issue sufficient to justify granting injunctive relief against the landlord.

To read the Injunction Motion decision click here.


(January 12, 2011)

In Print N' Promotion v. Kovachis, Jayson Thomas of Thomas Law P.C. acted successfully at the Court of Appeal for a group of individuals who owned a commercial property in the heart of Toronto's entertainment district, overturning a trial Judge's decision and granting Judgment in favour of his clients.

In this case, the subtenant of the commercial premises was awarded a trial Judgment against the landlord for what the subtenant claimed was a wrongful termination of the lease agreement between the landlord and the tenant, and therefore, an intentional interference with its contractual relations and economic interests. On appeal, the Court overturned the trial Judgment, finding that the legal test to establish that the landlord intentionally interfered with the subtenant's contractual relations and economic interests was not met. Jayson's clients were represented at trial by another law firm and only retained him weeks before their appeal materials were due for service and filing. The subtenant's lawyer brought a motion to quash the appeal advanced by Jayson's clients at the outset of the appeal based on an alleged technical defect in the Notice of Appeal filed by the former lawyer for Jayson's clients. Jayson successfully defeated this motion and therefore preserved his clients' right to maintain and eventually win their appeal.

Given the nature of the legal issues raised in this case, the Court of Appeal's decision was reported in the Real Property Reports and the Dominion Law Reports, both of which are national case law reporters.

To read the Court of Appeal's decision click here.


(August 16, 2010)

Jayson Thomas recently defended a commercial landlord from a lawsuit launched by the landlord's former tenant. In Zhu v. 212712 Ontario Inc., the tenant, a bar and restaurant owner, alleged that the landlord wrongfully terminated his lease and therefore sought damages against the landlord for $868,000.00, comprised of a loss of income and business, punitive damages, and certain restaurant equipment which was allegedly retained by the landlord.

The landlord's position at trial was that it terminated its lease with the tenant because of a number of breaches of the lease, including the tenant's installation of an additional lock onto the premises and was in violation of fire and safety by-laws. At trial, the tenant claimed that he received no notice of his breaches and therefore, the termination was unlawful. Based on the evidence presented by the landlord at trial over the course of 5 days, and an additional day and a half of closing arguments, the trial Judge found that the tenant was in breach of a number of provisions of the lease and had in fact received the several notices of breach delivered by the landlord. Accordingly, the trial Judge found that the landlord's termination of the lease was lawful and the tenant's claim for wrongful termination of the lease was dismissed. In the result, the landlord was only required to reimburse the tenant for the value of the bar and restaurant property retained by the landlord, amounting to just $12,500.00.

To read the trial Judge's decision click here.


(November, 2009)

Jayson Thomas' article on the boundaries of Mediation Privilege was recently published in the Ontario Bar Association's Alternative Dispute Resolution Newsletter. In this article, Jayson writes about the extent to which communications made during the course of a mediation are protected by privilege, and therefore not permitted to be disclosed, and whether a mediator can be called as a witness to attest to communications made during a mediation.

Click here to read Jayson's article.

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