Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope and application of a prior leave requirement preventing a vexatious litigant from filing further materials without judicial authorization, and whether the proposed appeal meets that threshold.
• Proper application of the three-part test for dismissing an action for delay (inordinate delay, inexcusable delay, and resulting prejudice) to a long-running civil action against a child protection agency.
• Allocation of responsibility for litigation delay, including periods affected by the plaintiff’s bankruptcy, and whether those circumstances excuse or merely explain the delay.
• Extent to which presumed and case-specific prejudice to the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto can be rebutted by the arguable legal merits and public-interest dimension of the plaintiff’s youth-record disclosure claims.
• Impact of the plaintiff’s litigation conduct, including repeated frivolous and vexatious motions and failure to amend the claim as directed by the Court of Appeal, on the interests of justice analysis.
• Question of whether requiring the plaintiff to obtain legal representation (as in Lochner-type orders) could fairly manage her access to the courts, given her history of disregarding judicial directions and practical difficulty retaining counsel.

Facts and procedural background

The litigation arises from a long-running dispute between M.E., a former child in care, and the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto (CAST) over alleged wrongful disclosure of highly sensitive youth justice and child-protection records. CAST had received a pre-disposition report in prior youth court proceedings while acting in the capacity of M.E.’s parent under the governing youth justice legislation. M.E. later alleged that CAST improperly disclosed this pre-disposition report and related confidential information to an administrative board (the “Board”), thereby breaching statutory non-disclosure protections for youth records and violating her rights. The case engages the youth record regimes under both the former Young Offenders Act and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, including whether M.E.’s youth record, encompassing the pre-disposition report, was subject to a presumption of non-disclosure; which statutory disclosure regime applies on the facts; whether a children’s aid society is exempt from those disclosure rules; and whether CAST was required to obtain judicial authorization before disclosing the report to the Board, even if M.E. may have requested some disclosure herself. At the heart of the underlying civil action is whether any statutory breaches give rise to civil liability in damages in favour of M.E. In an earlier 2020 decision involving the same parties, the Court of Appeal for Ontario allowed M.E.’s appeal in part after her action had been dismissed at first instance. The court granted her leave to amend her statement of claim to advance specific, tightly defined causes of action related to wrongful disclosure and youth record confidentiality, and expressly left open for determination whether CAST could ultimately be held liable in damages if such wrongful disclosure were established on the facts. The 2020 ruling thus preserved a narrow but significant pathway for M.E. to pursue discrete claims that the court characterized as tenable and, in some respects, of wider public interest beyond the parties because they raise pure questions of law regarding youth record disclosure and the powers and obligations of child welfare authorities. Despite this opportunity, M.E. did not amend her statement of claim as directed. Instead, over the following years she pursued numerous motions and appeals that courts repeatedly found to be frivolous, vexatious, or otherwise abusive of the process. She served and filed voluminous but often incoherent materials, made serious but unfounded allegations against opposing counsel and others, and failed to move the underlying action forward on the issues the Court of Appeal had identified as potentially meritorious. During this period, costs orders exceeding $30,000 were awarded in favour of CAST across various motions and appeals. M.E. ultimately declared bankruptcy, and CAST recovered little of those costs. This pattern of litigation misconduct and non-compliance with judicial directions culminated in an October 18, 2022 order of the Court of Appeal under rule 2.1.01 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. In that order, the court dismissed one of M.E.’s appeals as “an entirely frivolous, vexatious and abusive matter” and imposed a stringent leave requirement: M.E. was prohibited from filing any further materials in the Court of Appeal without first obtaining leave from a judge of that court. That leave condition was designed to protect the court and the opposing party from further abuse of process while preserving a narrow gate through which any truly meritorious issues could still pass. Parallel to these appellate developments, CAST moved in the Superior Court of Justice to dismiss M.E.’s action for delay. The motion judge, applying the established three-part test for dismissal for delay, found that the delay in advancing the action was inordinate, inexcusable, and had caused prejudice to CAST’s ability to have the case adjudicated on the merits. In particular, the judge noted that the proceedings had been on foot for more than nine years, yet for at least five of those years—since the 2020 Court of Appeal decision—no meaningful steps had been taken to amend the pleadings or move the tenable claims forward, despite extensive case management and repeated, clear judicial directions. The motion judge also observed that M.E. had instead pursued parallel and repetitive proceedings in multiple courts that were found to be vexatious and frivolous, accumulating significant costs orders, and that she continued to focus on “alternative issues” rather than the narrow disclosure claims the appellate court had previously identified. Concluding that the delay was inordinate and inexcusable and that both presumed and case-specific prejudice to CAST had not been rebutted, the motion judge ordered that M.E.’s action against CAST be dismissed for delay. This dismissal order is the decision M.E. later attempted to challenge in the Court of Appeal.

The motion for leave to file a notice of appeal

The 2025 Court of Appeal decision addresses M.E.’s attempt to surmount the earlier leave requirement. Importantly, the court emphasizes that M.E. was not yet seeking leave to appeal the dismissal order itself; she was seeking leave merely to file a notice of appeal in light of the 2022 order that barred her from filing materials without prior judicial permission. The overarching question, therefore, was whether it was in the interests of justice to permit her to commence a new appeal in the face of her vexatious litigation history. The court turned to the framework articulated in Huang v. Braga, where it had previously outlined a structured approach for deciding leave motions in the context of orders that restrict a party’s right to file further documents. The key considerations are: whether there are reasonable grounds of appeal that merit granting leave; whether the proposed proceeding is in substance a continuation of the same frivolous, vexatious, or abusive conduct that gave rise to the original restriction order; and, ultimately, whether granting or refusing leave would better serve the interests of justice. A related decision, Hoang v. Mann Engineering Ltd., had applied the same factors and reaffirmed that such restriction orders should not be “lightly disregarded or blithely treated.” Against that backdrop, the court scrutinized M.E.’s proposed notice of appeal. Rather than containing focused, intelligible grounds directed to the motion judge’s application of the delay test, the document largely consisted of references to statutory provisions from the Young Offenders Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Mental Health Act, the (repealed) Child and Family Services Act, and the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017. It also purported to seek an order “setting aside” the dismissal order on the basis that the motion judge had acted ultra vires, supported by a citation to a case dealing with the proper route of appeal from youth court, not dismissal for delay in civil proceedings. The Court of Appeal held that none of these statutory references or the requested relief amounted to tenable grounds of appeal against the dismissal for delay. The proposed grounds were opaque to the point that M.E.’s challenge to the dismissal order was “unknowable.” In substance, the court found that the proposed appeal was frivolous and vexatious and fell squarely within the pattern of abusive proceedings that had prompted the 2022 leave requirement. On that basis, M.E. did not meet the threshold for leave to file the proposed notice of appeal, and the court refused leave.

Consideration of a possible amendment to the notice of appeal

The court then considered whether M.E. should nonetheless be granted an opportunity to amend her notice of appeal to articulate potentially arguable grounds flowing from the dismissal order. Amicus curiae, appointed to assist the court, argued that there were at least some non-frivolous grounds available. Specifically, amicus submitted that the motion judge may have erred by attributing the entire period of relevant delay to M.E. without properly accounting for the time impacted by her bankruptcy, and by failing to weigh adequately the merits and public-interest dimension of her surviving claims in evaluating prejudice to CAST. In this respect, amicus emphasized that the Court of Appeal had previously identified discrete, tenable claims relating to youth record disclosure that are partly pure questions of law and arguably hold broader systemic importance, lessening the extent to which CAST’s litigation prejudice should be assumed from the passage of time. CAST, for its part, resisted any grant of leave to amend. It emphasized the deference owed to a discretionary dismissal for delay, contending that the motion judge applied the correct legal test and made no unreasonable, principle-based, or palpable and overriding errors. CAST also pointed to M.E.’s extensive history of missing deadlines, producing improper materials, and misdirecting the litigation away from the narrow claims previously sanctioned by the Court of Appeal. In CAST’s view, this pattern made it highly unlikely that M.E., especially if unrepresented, could craft a proper notice of appeal and then perfect the appeal in accordance with the required timelines, such that prejudice to CAST from further delay would persist or even increase. The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that leave to amend a notice of appeal is a discretionary decision guided by the interests of justice, with particular focus on prejudice to the respondent and the underlying merits. It then revisited the motion judge’s reasons on delay, which had drawn on the framework from Langenecker v. Sauvé and later cases such as Sickinger v. Krek. That line of authority holds that an action may be dismissed where delay is inordinate, inexcusable, and gives rise to at least a substantial risk that a fair trial is no longer possible, with inordinate delay giving rise to a rebuttable presumption of prejudice. The appellate court noted that the motion judge had deliberately confined her analysis to the last five years of a nine-year proceeding—an approach that actually favoured M.E.—and concluded that the delay in that period stemmed from M.E.’s choices, including her voluntary bankruptcy and her decision to prioritize other proceedings and issues over amending her claim. The Court of Appeal viewed this as a factual tracing of the cause of delay, not a moral judgment or misallocation of legal responsibility. It also accepted the motion judge’s finding that prejudice to CAST was both presumed and reinforced by case-specific factors. The motion judge had concluded that if the action continued, CAST would face renewed uncertainty and resource expenditure in a case where M.E. had repeatedly refused or failed to pursue the narrow, justiciable claims previously identified, instead resurrecting collateral or “alternative issues.” This conduct led the motion judge to infer that M.E. would not pursue even the remaining viable claims in a timely or disciplined manner going forward, thereby undermining CAST’s entitlement to finality. The Court of Appeal found these conclusions firmly grounded in the record and saw no realistic prospect that an appeal could establish reversible error on those points. On this assessment, the arguable-merit component of the interests of justice analysis was weak at best.

Access to justice, legal representation, and the Lochner comparison

A further issue raised by amicus was whether the court should adopt a remedial approach similar to that in Lochner v. Ontario Civilian Police Commission. In Lochner, the court had dealt with a litigant who, like M.E., exhibited several hallmarks of vexatious litigation and had engaged in harassing conduct for over a decade. Rather than completely closing the door to further proceedings, the court crafted “exceptional relief”: Lochner was barred from making further motions or commencing new matters unless he was represented by counsel, his materials were prepared and filed by a lawyer, and leave was obtained by that lawyer on his behalf. Amicus proposed a comparable structure for M.E., suggesting that the combination of counsel control and a leave filter might both protect the court and CAST and safeguard M.E.’s access to adjudication of what had once been recognized as tenable and potentially important legal claims. The Court of Appeal declined to extend Lochner-type relief on the record before it. First, the court expressed doubt that even with counsel M.E. would remain focused on the relevant issues. Over a five-year period, she had ignored or sidestepped clear, repeated directions from both the Court of Appeal and case-management judges in the Superior Court to limit her litigation to the viable disclosure-related claims. The court reasoned that if she had not been prepared to follow multiple layers of explicit judicial guidance, there was little reason to believe she would reliably follow a lawyer’s advice where it conflicted with her firmly held view of how the case should be pursued. While acknowledging that M.E. was entitled to her own litigation strategy, the court observed that such a stance would inevitably lead to further delay and concrete prejudice to CAST, a party entitled at some point to closure. Second, the court noted a practical impediment: M.E. advised that although she had a legal aid certificate, she had been unable to find a lawyer willing to accept her case. In these circumstances, restructuring future proceedings around mandatory legal representation did not appear realistically workable. For both principled and practical reasons, therefore, the court was not persuaded that ordering a Lochner-style regime would promote the interests of justice in this matter. Instead, the court concluded that refusing leave and allowing the dismissal for delay to stand was the appropriate outcome.

Outcome and monetary consequences

Ultimately, the Court of Appeal dismissed M.E.’s motion for leave to file a notice of appeal from the dismissal of her action against the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto. The court determined that the proposed notice of appeal was itself frivolous and vexatious, failed to articulate tenable grounds addressed to the motion judge’s delay analysis, and represented a continuation of the abusive litigation conduct that had previously triggered a leave restriction. It further held that there were no sufficiently arguable grounds to justify permitting an amended notice of appeal, given the deferential standard applicable to discretionary dismissal orders and the motion judge’s careful application of the established delay and prejudice framework. While acknowledging the underlying public-interest aspects of youth record confidentiality and the earlier recognition that some of M.E.’s claims were at least theoretically viable, the court concluded that, in light of her litigation history and the age of the case, the balance of the interests of justice favoured finality for CAST over further attempts to resurrect the action. The successful party in this appellate ruling is the respondent, the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, because M.E.’s motion for leave to file a notice of appeal was dismissed and the underlying dismissal of her action for delay remained in place. In terms of monetary relief in this decision, the Court of Appeal expressly declined to order costs on the motion, and no damages or other monetary awards were granted in connection with this ruling. Although the history of the litigation includes earlier costs orders totaling more than $30,000 in CAST’s favour, those amounts stem from prior proceedings and were largely unrecovered; this specific 2025 decision neither quantifies any final damages nor imposes new costs, so the total monetary award ordered in favour of the successful party in this decision cannot be determined beyond the fact that it includes no additional sums.