Divisional Court Grants Extraordinary Relief
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On May 15, 2020, the Divisional Court granted an application for judicial review by a leading network of independent health facilities against the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The case involved the Ministry’s unilateral decision to take $1.6 million in medical fees from the applicants without any independent adjudication and in the absence of statutory authority. The Divisional Court panel held that this conduct was unlawful and that the Ministry was not entitled to invoke equitable principles to justify its unauthorized taking of fees. In strongly worded reasons, the Court found that “allow[ing] an equitable remedy to be used to avoid an independent adjudication that the Ministry may find ‘administratively burdensome’ … would be to allow an equitable remedy to be adapted to perpetrate unfairness.” The Court granted the extraordinary remedy of mandamus to order the return of $1.6 million in fees unlawfully taken. The panel found that it “would threaten to bring the administration of justice into disrepute if the Ministry were permitted to benefit from conduct that a court has found to be unlawful.” Jonathan Lisus and Zain Naqi represented the successful applicants. The decision can be found here: 2020-05-15 Reasons for Decision