Background
This motion arose from protracted, high-conflict family law litigation between Marco Contardi and Sonia Lisboa Contardi. The proceedings had deteriorated to the point where the trial judge struck Marco’s pleadings and disentitled him to notice of events in the proceedings, sanctions imposed for his repeated breaches of disclosure orders, cost orders, and prior support obligations. The trial accordingly proceeded on an uncontested basis.
At trial, the court ordered Marco to pay child and spousal support arrears exceeding $1 million, secured by a vesting order registered against the matrimonial home, along with ongoing spousal and child support effective April 1, 2026. Marco filed a notice of appeal on April 23, 2026 from the trial order (dated March 6, 2026, as amended March 19, 2026), but failed to perfect the appeal by the May 25, 2026 deadline. Around May 20, 2026 — days before that deadline — he retained a forensic accounting expert, hoping the expert’s report would expose flaws in the respondent’s trial expert. He moved for an extension of time to perfect his appeal so that he could obtain the report and seek to introduce it as fresh evidence.
At the time of the motion, Marco remained in breach of the ongoing support orders, which had not been stayed, and his earlier appeal of the disclosure order had been dismissed.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Roberts, sitting as motion judge, dismissed the extension motion. She held that the equities squarely required dismissal because Marco had not come to court with clean hands: as a lawyer, he fully understood the obligation to comply with court orders, yet remained in deliberate breach of disclosure and support obligations, including the trial judgment itself. Relying on E.L.R. v. D.M.S., 2025 ONCA 802, she held that a party in such clear breach is not entitled to any indulgence from the court.
Applying the well-established factors from Issasi v. Rosenzweig, 2011 ONCA 112, and Enbridge Gas Distribution Inc. v. Froese, 2013 ONCA 131, the court found that the delay was excessive and inexcusable, highly prejudicial to the respondent and the parties’ children who depended on support payments, and inconsistent with the finality interests that are especially important in family proceedings. The last-minute retention of an expert suggested the true purpose was to delay compliance with court orders rather than to pursue a genuine appeal.
The court further found the appeal was without apparent merit. The proposed fresh evidence — a forensic report not yet in existence — could not impugn the trial judge’s reliance on the evidence before him, and many of the alleged deficiencies in the respondent’s expert report stemmed from Marco’s own failure to provide court-ordered disclosure. The attempt to introduce the expert report as fresh evidence also appeared to be an indirect effort to do what the striking of his pleadings had prohibited him from doing directly. The motion was characterized as an abuse of process designed to delay, and costs of $8,150 (all-inclusive) were awarded to the respondent.
Key Takeaways
- A party in ongoing, deliberate breach of court orders — particularly support and disclosure orders — will not be granted discretionary relief such as an extension of time to perfect an appeal; the clean hands principle applies with force in family law proceedings.
- Retaining an expert mere days before a perfection deadline, without any basis in the existing record, is insufficient to justify an extension and may itself signal dilatory intent rather than a genuine intention to appeal.
- An attempt to introduce fresh expert evidence on appeal will be scrutinized carefully where the alleged deficiencies in the opposing expert’s report were caused by the moving party’s own failure to comply with disclosure orders — such conduct undermines the very complaint being advanced.
- In family law appeals, the interests of children and dependent spouses in receiving timely, court-ordered support weigh heavily against procedural delay, and courts will deny extensions that serve only to defer those entitlements.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that Ontario courts will refuse to extend procedural indulgences to parties who strategically deploy appeals as a tool to defer compliance with support and financial disclosure obligations. The ruling makes clear that the clean hands doctrine operates as a threshold bar to discretionary relief, not merely as one factor to weigh, and that status as a legally trained litigant aggravates rather than mitigates the court’s assessment of non-compliance.
For family law practitioners, the case is a pointed reminder that an appeal does not automatically stay ongoing support obligations, and that a late-stage, speculative plan to obtain expert evidence — particularly where gaps in that evidence trace back to the client’s own disclosure failures — will not satisfy the merits or interests-of-justice prongs required for an extension of time.