Title: Hollick and Environmental Class Actions: Putting the Substance into Class Action Procedure
Abstract: Hollick is significant as the first environmental class action to reach the Supreme Court of Canada. Yet it is also important more broadly as an example of how the civil litigation process presents significant barriers to environmental litigants by its failure to grapple with the fundamental dynamics of environmental law. This paper will argue that class action certification decisions are not strictly procedural and that in environmental cases, a contextual approach, informed by the principles of environmental law, would require courts to consider the nature of environmental harm, those affected by it, and the requisite appropriate remedies. This would alter both the courts' approach to the certification test and the outcome of the cases. Hollick was not approached primarily as an environmental case, and as a result, the decision can be critiqued as a class action certification decision, as an environmental decision and as a nuisance decision.
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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