Our Work

John Adair, Robert Stellick, and David Ionis successfully obtained a stay of a commercial construction arbitration on behalf of Atkinsréalis under s. 13(7) of the Arbitration Act, 1991. The stay was granted to prevent the arbitration from proceeding pending the completion of our client’s application seeking to have the arbitrator removed for having demonstrated a reasonable apprehension of bias.

As the first reported judicial consideration of s. 13(7) of the Arbitration Act, 1991, this decision is of important precedential value. The important takeaways are the Court’s application of the elevated “strong prima facie case” standard to the merits part of the stay analysis and that the Court found that requiring a party to proceed while an apprehension of bias challenge is outstanding can constitute irreparable harm.