Legal Advice to Police: No Duty of Care Owed by Crown Attorneys
Crown Attorneys do not owe the police a duty of care in respect of the legal advice they provide to them. Smith v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2019 ONCA 651. In order to determine whether or not a duty of care should be recognized, it is necessary to follow the two-stage Anns/Cooper test. At the first stage of this legal test, the question is whether the facts disclose a relationship of proximity in which failure to take reasonable care might foreseeably cause loss or harm to the plaintiff. [FN] If this is established, a prima facie duty of care arises and the analysis proceeds to the second stage, which asks whether there are policy reasons why this prima facie duty of care should not be recognized. In Smith v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2019 ONCA 651, the Court of Appeal for Ontario considered the following in making its determination that there is not a sufficiently direct and close relationship to impose a prim...