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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this long-awaited issue! We hope you enjoy this interesting
issue.
This journal is jam-packed with wonderful articles, including two
book reviews, the 2018 Strosberg Pri ze-winning p aper, and two additional
remarkable prize entries. We have also included a revised version of
Madeleine Brown’s 2017 Strosberg Prize-winning paper, which was ori-
ginally published i n volume 13, issue 1. During our final e diting process,
some of the Judges referred to by the author were inadvertently given
incorrect titles. In t his slightly revised version, these titles have been
corrected.
Matt Malone is the 2018 Strosberg Prize winner! His pri ze-winning
paper is titled “Judicial Scrutiny of Third Part y Litigation Funding Agree-
ments in Canadian Class Actions.” He states that the emergence of third
party litigation funding agreements — contracts by third pa rties fund-
ing litigation in which they h ave no direct stake or claim, usually in ex-
change for a percentage of the recovery — has animated vigorous debate
about some of the most fundamental i ssues in the legal system. His paper
examines re cent trends in third party l itigation funding of class proceed-
ings in Canad a. He analyzes the efforts by C anadian judges to bring scr u-
tiny to such fundin g arrangements. He argues that t hese efforts generally
succeed in balancing the concerns of both proponents and opponents of
such agreements.
In “Class Proceedings and the Future of Boilerplate in Consumer
Contracts: Unconscionability as a Common Law Solution to Class Act ion
Avoidance,” Nicholas Reynolds wr ites that although boiler plate text in
consumer contracts is ubiquitous, consumers have only the slightest
understanding of the terms to which they agree. Reynolds believes that
this change in how commerce is conducted has caused contract theory
to slip into a different paradigm, divorced from actual agreement. Con-
sumers are now overwhelmingly vulnerable, unknow ingly agreeing to a
host of terms that d iscourages all but the boldest consumers from pursu-
ing remedies, and the substance of consumer contracts i s at odds with
Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act. This well-received Strosberg submission
CCAR 13-2.indb 187 10/30/2018 11:41:50 AM
