Viewed through the most charitable of lenses, litigation is occasionally lauded as a means for achieving positive social change – a blunt and wickedly expensive tool for social engineering, if you will. Class actions can be particularly effective in this role, serving at times not only to direct attention to safety or public welfare issues, but also to impose massive penalties for transgressors and those who may snub their noses at the public good. The deterrent and behaviour-modifying effect of class actions can be very powerful indeed.

In 126217 Canada Inc. v. Cytrynbaum, 2018 QCCS 2616, the Plaintiff sued Cytrynbaum and Java-U Group Inc. for shareholder oppression and requested that its $2.5 million investment in Java-U Group Inc. be returned.