paid a $1.1 million fine<\/a>.<\/p>\nHowever, the court found that proposed civil action following that enforcement case is not suitable as a class action.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately, I cannot find that a class proceeding in this case would be fair, efficient, or manageable,” the court ruled.<\/p>\n
“The heart of the plaintiffs\u2019 case is the allegation that the defendant harmed their financial interests by acting in a conflict of interest when selling RBC [portfolio] funds… This is a highly individualized claim that is simply not amenable to class determination,” it said.<\/p>\n
To start, the court also struck down several of the plaintiffs’ proposed causes for action.<\/p>\n
It found the plaintiffs’ claim that the arrangement violated a fiduciary duty to the clients was destined to fail, as were claims of unjust enrichment and breach of “equitable obligation.”<\/p>\n
The court said it’s possible the plaintiffs could make a claim for breach of contract. However, it also concluded that assessing damages on a breach of contract claim would require an examination of each investor’s individual circumstances.<\/p>\n
“In this case, the determination of each class member\u2019s claim will require evidence of their financial circumstances, when and why they purchased an RBC [portfolio] fund, whether they would have purchased an RBC [portfolio] fund absent enhanced compensation, and whether they suffered a financial loss as a result of investing in RBC [portfolio] funds,” it said.<\/p>\n
The court noted that while the plaintiffs argued that many of the losses suffered by individual investors are very small, and that a class action is the only way for investors to get justice, that’s not a sufficient reason to certify a class action.<\/p>\n
“The fact that a class proceeding may be the only practical procedure available to the plaintiff cannot justify certification of an unworkable class proceeding that involves individual evidence and fact-finding,” it said.<\/p>\n
It also noted that one of the objectives of class proceedings \u2014 behaviour modification \u2014 has already been accomplished by the OSC enforcement action.<\/p>\n
“This case, which will almost certainly devolve into a multitude of individual trials, will not serve the goal of judicial economy,” the court said in its decision.<\/p>\n
As a result, it found that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the requirements for certification as a class action, and it dismissed their application for certification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The firm was sanctioned by the OSC in 2018 for violating the sales practices rule<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143134,"featured_media":168334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,14],"tags":[1372,1516,1326],"yst_prominent_words":[4845,91535,91534,91533,91532,91531,91530,73906,63474,12451,12104,8275,5845,2563,1677,1002,587,396,344,254],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188677"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188680,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188677\/revisions\/188680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188677"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phoenix.advisor.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=188677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}