This article Canada: When Is A Release Full And Final? deals with the question of whether a release that covered ‘all claims arising out of the services provided’, but which did not expressly refer to unknown or unforeseeable claims, nevertheless covered unknown or unforeseeable claims arising out of the services provided. This became important a few years later when the ‘services provided’ resulted in $1.24 million in additional taxes for the releasor. For the answer and legal reasoning, read the full article on Mondaq.com.

Certain articles within this post were linked and referenced with the permission of Mondaq.com, through our exciting content collaboration with them. To access Mondaq’s large database of articles written by top law firm lawyers from around the world, you must leave our site and create a free account on theirs.

Takeaway:

• A release agreement that does not explicitly exclude "unknown claims" or future claims, will potentially result in the release of those claims. In this case at the appeal level, the lack of explicit treatment on future claims led to a finding that such claims were released by the release language as provided.