Relief Not Plead

936464 Ontario Ltd. v. Mungo Bear Ltd., 2003 CanLII 72356 (ON SCDC)

[46] The Newfoundland Court of Appeal dealt with this very issue in Popular Shoes, supra. At paras. 24 and 25, Green J.A. had this to say:

Particularly in Small Claims Court, where claimants, as here, are often unrepresented, a liberal approach ought to be taken to the pleadings that are presented so as to ensure that access to proper adjudication of claims is not prevented on a technicality. Even in superior court, the basic rule of pleading is that a party must plead material facts and is not required, as a condition of relief, to be correct in fitting those facts, as a matter of pleading, into a particular legal pigeon-hole. This is particularly appropriate for litigation in the Small Claims Court where technicalities are to be avoided and unrepresented parties (as Popular and Mrs. Claeys were in this case) are required to express their claims in their own words. If a claimant by his or her pleading or evidence states facts which, if accepted by the trier of fact, constitute a cause of action known to the law, the claimant should prima facie be entitled to the remedy claimed if that is appropriate to vindicate that cause of action. The only limitation would be the obvious one that if the case takes a turn completely different from that disclosed or inferentially referenced in the Statement of Claim, thereby causing prejudice to the other side in being able properly to prepare for or respond thereto, the court may either decline to give relief or allow further time to the other side to make a proper response.

A Small Claims Court judge has a duty, on being presented with facts that fall broadly within the umbrella of the circumstances described in the Statement of Claim, to determine whether those facts constitute a cause of action known to the law, regardless of whether it can be said that the claimant, as a [page57] matter of pleading, has asserted that or any other particular cause of action. Subject to considerations of fairness and surprise to the other side, if a cause of action has been established, the appropriate remedy, within the subject-matter jurisdiction of the court, ought to be granted.

[47] This passage commends itself to me as a practical approach to the manner in which justice is and must be dispensed on a day-to-day basis in our Small Claims Court, and I adopt it. In my view, the deputy judge was presented with facts, broadly within the umbrella of the circumstances described in the claim, which constituted a cause of action in quantum meruit. As such, she was entitled to grant a remedy on that basis. I would not, therefore, give effect to this ground of appeal.