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Class actions often require judges to address issues and requests that do not arise in traditional litigation. An increasingly important example is the honorarium payment: additional compensation made to the representative plaintiffs of a class action in the event of a successful outcome. The current Ontario class action regime does not expressly authorize honorarium payments despite the higher risks, and monetary and time commitments made by representative plaintiffs. As a result, the author argues that Ontario judges have dealt with these requests for honorarium payments in an inconsistent and overly restrictive manner. This article attempts to explain some of these judicial inconsistencies through conceptual, empirical and comparative lenses. The author first reviews the honoraria jurisprudence and investigates how honorarium payments interact with the interests of the class members and the need for representative plaintiffs to provide adequate representation for the class. The author then decodes cross-jurisdictional data gained through independent research in an attempt to reconcile the number of honorarium payments that are granted, the quantum of the payments, and the judicial reasons for doing so with the relevant jurisprudence. Ultimately, the data reveals that there is far too much discrepancy in the issuance of honorarium payments, resulting in an unsatisfactory class action landscape in Ontario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on court cases participated by Donald Bowman, as a judge and a tax litigator, involving tax treatment of intangibles. It describes the majority of cases handled by Bowman which dealt with issues of whether expenses should be on current or capital account status, including Denison Mines Ltd. v. the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and Johns Manville Canada Inc. v. The Queen. Other cases on intangibles are discussed, such as density rights and characterization of software.

The article presents a chronology of career highlights of Donald Bowman as a tax litigator for the Department of Justice in Canada beginning in 1962. An overview is provided on a variety of court cases he litigated before the Tax Appeal Board, the Exchequer Court, the Federal Court, and the Supreme Court of Canada. The article highlights Bowman's career after he left public practice in 1971.

'Family law procedure' differs greatly from 'civil procedure.' Canadian jurisdictions and common-law jurisdictions have copied English reforms of merging law and equity. Canada unlike the United States confined legislative authority over divorce to the federal government under the British North American Act. The Canadian federal government enacted the national Divorce Act of 1968, which had a homogenizing effect on substantive family law across Canada in both custody and support matters for a number of years. There are many pressures for fragmentation of procedure specifically, dealing with the provincial courts. Modern family law procedure is much more like civil procedure. If inquisitorial methods are used or if discovery is limited using 'simplified rules' for smaller cases, family law procedure will become two different tiers-one for self-represented litigants and litigants where the stakes are small and the other tier would be one that operated under the 'normal' rules of civil procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]