The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has decided to enforce a construction settlement and ordered a pair of homeowners to pay their contractor $85,000 after they refused to honor a settlement agreement they had signed months earlier1. In a decision dated October 29, 2025, Associate Justice Todd Robinson granted a motion brought by Dani Building System Inc., or DBS, to enforce the settlement it had reached with homeowners Syed and Nasreen Hossain. Courts have routinely backed contractors in such disputes.
The court rejected the homeowners’ arguments that they had been pressured into the deal and did not give informed consent, finding instead that a binding agreement was reached with the full participation of their legal counsel. The ruling brings an end to a contentious construction dispute that included a significant counterclaim for over $474,000 filed by the homeowners.
The underlying legal action began as a dispute over a home renovation and construction project at the Hossains’ property. DBS was contracted to build an extension and perform renovation work. When a disagreement over payment arose, DBS preserved and perfected a lien under the Construction Act for $76,618.61, which it claimed represented an unpaid management fee and the cost of services and materials. The Hossains disputed the validity of the lien and the amount claimed. They also advanced a significant counterclaim against DBS, alleging numerous deficiencies and incomplete work, which was later quantified during legal discoveries at $474,324.12. The contractor, DBS, also asserted that its lien had priority over charges on the property held by several mortgagees, including Royal Bank of Canada, Comat Mortgage Corporation, and Ashley Joan Fleischer.
The case had been actively managed by the court since October 2023, and a peremptory trial was scheduled to take place in July 2025. Before the trial, the parties agreed to attend a settlement conference in September 2024, which was presided over by Associate Justice Wiebe. At that conference, DBS and the Hossains, who were represented by their lawyer, reached a settlement in principle. The terms of this agreement were that the Hossains would pay DBS a total of $75,000 by March 31, 2025. If they failed to make that payment by the deadline, they agreed to consent to a judgment against them for the higher amount of $85,000. In exchange for this payment, the Hossains agreed to dismiss their counterclaim, and DBS agreed to dismiss its action against the mortgagee defendants.
Following the conference, the parties’ lawyers worked to finalize the formal paperwork. The court record shows that the Hossains signed formal minutes of settlement on two separate occasions: first on November 14, 2024, and again on December 31, 2024, on a revised final version. This final version was ultimately signed by DBS and all the mortgagee defendants. Throughout this entire negotiation and signing period, the Hossains were represented by their lawyers, who had been acting for them since May 2024. The March 31, 2025 payment deadline came and went, but the Hossains did not pay the $75,000. By May 2025, they had opted to represent themselves and informed the court they wished to bring a motion to “remove the construction lien and reverse settlement agreement.” In response, DBS brought its own motion under Rule 49.09 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, asking the court to enforce the agreement and grant judgment for the $85,000 specified in the settlement’s default clause.
Before Associate Justice Robinson, the Hossains did not dispute that they had signed the minutes of settlement. Their position was that the settlement was not binding. They argued that they had not given voluntary and informed consent, that they had received improper legal advice, and that they had agreed to the terms due to fundamental mistake and procedural unfairness. They claimed that enforcing the settlement would lead to a serious injustice and deny them their right to a fair trial, particularly since they maintained the contractor’s lien was invalid. They specifically pointed to the settlement conference, submitting affidavit evidence from Mr. Hossain who stated they “felt frustrated, nervous, and pressured” and that Associate Justice Wiebe had “treated them unfairly” and “threatened to impose further sanctions”. Mr. Hossain’s evidence stated, “Under these circumstances, we did not have sufficient mental capacity to understand the draft settlement agreement.”
Associate Justice Robinson first had to determine whether a legally binding settlement had been reached. Applying an objective test, which considers what a reasonable observer would have believed the parties intended, he found the evidence of a concluded agreement to be overwhelming. He noted that the conduct of the parties and the communications between their lawyers after the settlement conference were crucial. On December 11, 2024, DBS’s lawyer emailed the final minutes to the Hossains’ lawyer, with a covering email that clearly stated: “The point of the settlement is that your client pays $75k by the end of March 2025, failing which we have judgment for $85k”. A few hours later, the Hossains’ lawyer replied, “Acknowledged. We will seek instructions.” Then, on January 10, 2025, the Hossains’ lawyer sent an email with the subject line, “Please see attached fully executed Minutes of Settlement,” which contained the document signed by the Hossains.
The evidence of an agreement continued to build. On January 20, 2025, the Hossains’ lawyer requested a fully executed copy of the minutes to allow the Hossains “sufficient time to procure financing.” On January 23, the lawyers for both DBS and the Hossains appeared before Associate Justice Robinson and reported that the settlement documents were finalized. On February 12, 2025, the Hossains’ lawyer sent another email confirming, “I confirm that we are agreeable with the form and content of the documentation you have provided, and will provide our client’s signed documentation as soon as possible.” Associate Justice Robinson noted that at no time did the Hossains’ lawyers raise any concerns about the settlement terms or take the position that no binding deal existed. These concerns were only raised after the Hossains missed the payment deadline and began to self-represent. Based on this record, the court had “no hesitation” in finding that an objective offer was made and accepted.
The court then rejected the Hossains’ subjective arguments. The claim of lacking voluntary or informed consent was undermined by the fact they were represented by counsel. A lawyer has the ostensible authority to bind their client in a settlement, and DBS was entitled to rely on that authority. During oral argument, Mr. Hossain also conceded that they did agree to pay $75,000 and withdraw their counterclaim, a concession the court found was “at odds” with the position that they lacked informed consent. The court also addressed Mr. Hossain’s submission at the hearing that he had only seen the signature page in DocuSign and signed the minutes with his children’s assistance without reading them. Associate Justice Robinson noted this claim was not in his sworn affidavit and, regardless, provided no basis to find it was reasonable for them not to have read a document they signed twice, months apart.
Regarding the claims of being pressured by the settlement conference judge, Associate Justice Robinson wrote that while he did not doubt the Hossains felt “frustrated, nervous, and pressured,” they had “tendered no specific evidence on what Wiebe A.J. is said to have done that created a procedurally unfair environment or put undue pressure on them.” He noted that the Hossains had not submitted any documents supporting their counterclaim at the settlement conference, and any comments from Associate Justice Wiebe about this “absence of evidence appear to have been founded.” Furthermore, the court found that any “pressure” from the conference had a “cooling off period,” as the final documents were negotiated and signed over the course of several months that followed. As for the claim of ineffective legal representation, the court found there was insufficient evidence to make such a finding, and that if the Hossains had complaints about their lawyers, “they have a potential remedy against their lawyers.”
Having found a settlement existed, the court considered whether to use its discretion to enforce it. Associate Justice Robinson noted that a decision not to enforce a settlement “should be reserved for those rare cases where compelling circumstances establish that the enforcement of the settlement is not in the interests of justice.” He found no such injustice here. Instead, he found that DBS would suffer prejudice, as it had already incurred over $58,000 in legal fees and the July 2025 trial dates had been vacated. If the settlement were not enforced, a trial could not proceed until 2026, at significant greater expense to all. The court was therefore satisfied that this was not one of those “rare cases” and that the settlement must be enforced.
Associate Justice Robinson granted DBS’s motion. He ordered that DBS shall have judgment against the Hossains, jointly and severally, for the sum of $85,000. He also ordered that the Hossains’ counterclaim be dismissed with prejudice, that they must execute a final release, and that the action against the mortgagee defendants be dismissed without costs. As the successful party on the motion, DBS was entitled to its legal costs. The court fixed these costs at $4,000, which the Hossains are required to pay within forty-five days.
