The Quebec Superior Court recently granted an unusually strict protective order to defendants in a class action to prevent evidence from the class action finding its way into parallel criminal proceedings against them. The defendants are a group of gas station owners (both corporations and individuals) who have been charged with conspiring to fix retail [...]

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In a recent decision, the Federal Court of Canada enforced a class action waiver and an arbitration clause in a private action under section 36 of the Competition Act.[1] The decision is significant because it clearly states two important principles: Class action waivers will be enforced unless they are contrary to statute Claims alleging breaches [...]

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On December 1, 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear appeals in two cases that raise the issue: can indirect purchasers sue to recover losses arising from a price fixing conspiracy?[i] This issue has bedevilled Canadian courts for years. Direct purchasers are purchasers who buy directly from the participants in a price fixing [...]

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In recent years, much attention has been paid to amendments to provincial Securities Acts across Canada that make it easier for shareholders to sue for misrepresentations by public companies in financial statements and other public documents…

During this period significantly less attention has been paid to whether shareholder class actions might be brought under another and potentially much broader statutory remedy: the oppression remedy under one of the provincial or federal business corporations statutes. However, this may be changing.

Originally published in The Lawyers Weekly.

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Courts in two Canadian cases have recently made it easier to certify direct and indirect-purchaser class actions seeking damages for alleged price fixing. Formerly, the difficulty of proving damages suffered by indirect purchasers on a class-wide basis was a major impediment to certifying such actions. The two decisions, DRAM (Pro-Sys Consultants Ltd. v. Infineon Technologies [...]

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