BETTERMENT BEFORE CANADIAN COMMON LAW COURTS

Abstract

An award of damages, measured as the cost of restoration of a plaintiff's property which has been damaged as a result of a defendant's tortious or contractual breach, often places the plaintiff in a better position than the status quo ante the infringement. Until recently, Anglo-Canadian law has not readily reduced the plaintiff's damages to account for this betterment value. Recent decisions of the Ontario Court of Appeal create a path in which the betterment value is deducted from the defaulting party's damages. While this new approach is objectively more just, its practical implementation is not without difficulty.