New Book on Court Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act
The British Columbia Court of Appeal’s decision in Stanway v. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc., 2009 BCCA 592 (available here) is an important contribution to the developing Canadian jurisprudence on the Civil Jurisdiction and Proceedings Transfer Act, a statute governing the taking of jurisdiction that has been adopted in several provinces.
A leading common law approach to the question of whether there is a real and substantial connection between a dispute and the forum (the test for jurisdiction) is that outlined in the Court of Appeal for Ontario’s decision in Muscutt v. Courcelles (available here). There is an ongoing controversy about the extent to which that approach has any relevance after a province has adopted the CJPTA. This is because the statute sets out an open-ended list of situations in which a real and substantial connection is presumed to exist (s. 10). However, it remains open to a plaintiff (under s. 3) to otherwise establish such a connection, and on one view the approach in Muscutt is relevant to that analysis. See in Nova Scotia the decision in Bouch v. Penny (available here).