“The concepts of frivolous and vexatious proceedings were described by the Court of Appeal in Currie v. Halton Regional Police Services Board, 2003 CanLII 7815 (ON CA):
[14] Black’s Law Dictionary defines “frivolous” as: “Lacking a legal basis or legal merit; not serious; not reasonably purposeful”.
[15] In Foy v. Foy (No. 2) (1979), 1979 CanLII 1631 (ON CA), 26 O.R. (2d) 220 at 226, Howland, C.J.O. considered the meaning of “vexatious” under the Vexatious Proceedings Act, R.S.O. 1970, c. 481:
The word “vexatious” has not been clearly defined. Under the Act, the legal proceedings must be vexatious and must also have been instituted without reasonable ground. In many of the reported decisions the legal proceedings have been held to be vexatious because they were instituted without any reasonable ground. As a result the proceedings were found to constitute an abuse of the process of the Court. An example of such proceedings is the bringing of one or more actions to determine an issue which has already been determined by a Court of competent jurisdiction: Stevenson v. Garnett, [1898] 1 Q.B. 677 at pp. 680-1; Re Langton, [1966] 3 All. E.R.
At para. 17, the court concluded, “What I take from the authorities is that any action for which there is clearly no merit may qualify for classification as frivolous, vexatious or an abuse of process”.”