Areas of Focus:

Question: What kinds of legal wrongdoing or claims might be litigated in Ontario, and who can help me review my situation with a paralegal at Melville Legal?

Answer: In Ontario, many issues can end up in litigation, including employment-related disputes, negligence claims involving harm caused by someone’s failure to meet a duty of care, and other tortious conduct where one person’s wrongful act can give another party a right to sue.   To understand which wrongdoings (and potential causes of action) may apply to your facts, Melville Legal can help you organize what happened, identify the likely legal issues, and outline practical next steps so you can move forward with more clarity and less cost risk.   If you are dealing with a dispute, acting quickly to preserve documents and meet deadlines can matter, and a paralegal’s guidance can support effective, focused precedent research and argument for your matter.   For an initial discussion about your options in Ontario, call (289) 981-7712 to get started.

Understanding the Types of Issues/Wrongdoings that May Be Litigated

The body of law is much too large for any individual person to ever know in full.  Indeed, even highly experienced judges with decades of experience will be without full knowledge of the law and are therefore, usually, assigned to handle a narrow focus of cases that are within areas of law that are familiar to the judge.  Even so, judges will routinely expect representatives for the parties to perform precedent research and then provide submissions and present argument based upon the findings of that research.

“... I include myself among those who had never heard of the tort of barratry ...”
~ C.A. Osborne A.C.J.O.
McIntyre Estate v. Ontario, 2001 CanLII 7972 (ON CA)

It is common for adjudicators to be assigned matters within defined subject areas based on experience and familiarity with the issues that most often arise in those proceedings.  In a similar way, legal practitioners tend to focus their work within particular practice areas that align with the types of disputes they most frequently handle across courts, tribunals, and other decision making bodies.  While every case turns on its own facts, legal systems have developed over centuries, and truly novel legal issues are relatively uncommon, meaning established legal principles and precedent will usually exist to guide the analysis and outcome.  Engaging representation that is closely aligned with the specific issues in dispute can improve strategic focus, enhance the quality of legal research and argument, promote procedural efficiency, reduce unnecessary costs, and strengthen the overall likelihood of a well-reasoned and favourable result.