What if you start an action against an institution, like the government, a hospital or university, but there is an internal appeal process that you should have gone through?
Lam v University of Western Ontario (2019), 144 O.R.(3d) 587 says that the general rule is that you are supposed to follow the internal appeal process and then if you are unhappy go for judicial review.
But in Lam, the Court of Appeal said that you don’t always have to do this. Once in a while you can go straight to a real court and a real judge.
Every lawyer knows that these ‘internal’ appeal processes are unsatisfactory to say the least. The decision-maker is almost never a high experienced person with a truly judicial temperament. The institutional dynamic always defaults to the institutional view. There is always an institutional bias. The ordinary person seldom gets a fair shake in this ‘internal’ appeal processes.
So it is a breath of fresh air for the Ontario Court of Appeal to permit a statement of claim to continue against a university because a PhD supervisory committee pressured a student into quitting and used his grant for other purposes.
