Res Judicata (General)

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Date Retrieved:	2024-04-29
CLNP Page ID:	2309
Page Categories:	Legal Principles
Citation:	Res Judicata (General), CLNP 2309, <https://rvt.link/9s>, retrieved on 2024-04-29
Editor:	Sharvey
Last Updated:	2023/11/22

Danyluk v. Ainsworth Technologies Inc., 2001 SCC 44 (CanLII), [2001] 2 SCR 460

22 The extension of the doctrine of issue estoppel in Canada to administrative agencies is traced back to cases in the mid-1800s by D. J. Lange in The Doctrine of Res Judicata in Canada (2000), at p. 94 et seq., including Robinson v. McQuaid (1854), 1 P.E.I.R. 103 (S.C.), at pp. 104-5, and Bell v. Miller (1862), 9 Gr. 385 (U.C. Ch.), at p. 386. The modern cases at the appellate level include Raison v. Fenwick (1981), 1981 CanLII 786 (BC CA), 120 D.L.R. (3d) 622 (B.C.C.A.); Rasanen, supra; Wong v. Shell Canada Ltd. (1995), 1995 CanLII 17974 (AB CA), 15 C.C.E.L. (2d) 182 (Alta. C.A.); Machin v. Tomlinson (2000), 2000 CanLII 16945 (ON CA), 194 D.L.R. (4th) 326 (Ont. C.A.); and Hamelin v. Davis (1996), 1996 CanLII 8356 (BC CA), 18 B.C.L.R. (3d) 112 (C.A.). See also Thrasyvoulou v. Environment Secretary, [1990] 2 A.C. 273 (H.L.). Modifications were necessary because of the “major differences that can exist between [administrative orders and court orders] in relation, inter alia, to their legal nature and the position within the state structure of the institutions that issue them”: R. v. Consolidated Maybrun Mines Ltd., 1998 CanLII 820 (SCC), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 706, at para. 4. There is generally no dispute that court orders are judicial orders; the same cannot be said of the myriad of orders that are issued across the range of administrative tribunals.

23 In this appeal the parties have not argued “cause of action” estoppel, apparently taking the view that the statutory framework of the ESA claim sufficiently distinguishes it from the common law framework of the court case. I therefore say no more about it. They have however, joined issue on the application of issue estoppel and the relevance of the rule against collateral attack.

24 Issue estoppel was more particularly defined by Middleton J.A. of the Ontario Court of Appeal in McIntosh v. Parent, 1924 CanLII 401 (ON CA), [1924] 4 D.L.R. 420, at p. 422:

When a question is litigated, the judgment of the Court is a final determination as between the parties and their privies. Any right, question, or fact distinctly put in issue and directly determined by a Court of competent jurisdiction as a ground of recovery, or as an answer to a claim set up, cannot be re-tried in a subsequent suit between the same parties or their privies, though for a different cause of action. The right, question, or fact, once determined, must, as between them, be taken to be conclusively established so long as the judgment remains. [Emphasis added.]

This statement was adopted by Laskin J. (later C.J.), dissenting in Angle, supra, at pp. 267-68. This description of the issues subject to estoppel (“[a]ny right, question or fact distinctly put in issue and directly determined”) is more stringent than the formulation in some of the older cases for cause of action estoppel (e.g., “all matters which were, or might properly have been, brought into litigation”, Farwell, supra, at p. 558). Dickson J. (later C.J.), speaking for the majority in Angle, supra, at p. 255, subscribed to the more stringent definition for the purpose of issue estoppel. “It will not suffice” he said, “if the question arose collaterally or incidentally in the earlier proceedings or is one which must be inferred by argument from the judgment.” The question out of which the estoppel is said to arise must have been “fundamental to the decision arrived at” in the earlier proceeding. In other words, as discussed below, the estoppel extends to the material facts and the conclusions of law or of mixed fact and law (“the questions”) that were necessarily (even if not explicitly) determined in the earlier proceedings.

25 The preconditions to the operation of issue estoppel were set out by Dickson J. in Angle, supra, at p. 254:

(1) that the same question has been decided;

(2) that the judicial decision which is said to create the estoppel was final; and,

(3) that the parties to the judicial decision or their privies were the same persons as the parties to the proceedings in which the estoppel is raised or their privies.

...

54 A cause of action has traditionally been defined as comprising every fact which it would be necessary for the plaintiff to prove, if disputed, in order to support his or her right to the judgment of the court: Poucher v. Wilkins (1915), 1915 CanLII 514 (ON CA), 33 O.L.R. 125 (C.A.). Establishing each such fact (sometimes referred to as material facts) constitutes a precondition to success. It is apparent that different causes of action may have one or more material facts in common. In this case, for example, the existence of an employment contract is a material fact common to both the ESA proceeding and to the appellant’s wrongful dismissal claim in court. Issue estoppel simply means that once a material fact such as a valid employment contract is found to exist (or not to exist) by a court or tribunal of competent jurisdiction, whether on the basis of evidence or admissions, the same issue cannot be relitigated in subsequent proceedings between the same parties. The estoppel, in other words, extends to the issues of fact, law, and mixed fact and law that are necessarily bound up with the determination of that “issue” in the prior proceeding.