Was in the gallery yesterday with notes
Was already downtown Calgs and decided to pop into the gallery yesterday. Wanted to share since I know not everyone could make it out. These are my own full notes, not an official transcript, so some detail may be slightly off and I’m happy to be corrected if anyone else caught it live!
I can’t believe Ian and Anisa travelled 3hrs for this. I saw them in the courtroom and they were near the back.
Jennifer Blanchard from Wilson Laycraft appeared for the Ian and Anisa, and Lucy Lhirondelle from Norton Rose appeared for Ethan. Judge Farrington was the presiding in Kings Bench Chambers.
The judge denied the application to enforce settlement. Rough summary of the reasoning:
The court found real doubt as to whether a settlement was actually concluded.
Courts can fill gaps in a contract (and a settlement is a contract) on an objective basis, but only where the parties intended an objective standard to apply.
Here, the parties didn't set an objective standard. The standard was whether Ian’s statement was subjectively satisfactory to Ethan. “The statement needed to be satisfactory to one person, and that was Mr. Klein.”
Because of that, the court can't step in and rule the apology as "good enough," since that would mean substituting its own judgment for a subjective standard that belongs to just Ethan.
The judge noted the extensive back-and-forth between counsel suggested the parties contemplated a more formal, finalized agreement and not something resolved informally.
Nothing stopped Ian from getting pre-approval on the statement before posting it, but that didn't happen, and the court won't retroactively deem it sufficient after the fact.
The judge was really cool and he gave a great contracts law lesson. He also expressed hope the parties could still settle on their own but declined to impose it.
I think we’re going to see a more fulsome apology soon lmao