What is a motion to consolidate two lawsuits into one in Ontario?

When two or more separate lawsuits share common questions of fact or law, or arise out of the same events, a party can bring a motion asking the court to consolidate them into a single proceeding, or at least have them heard together. The goal is efficiency: avoiding duplicated discovery, inconsistent findings from different judges on the same facts, and the added cost of running parallel cases that largely overlap. A judge deciding this motion weighs how much the cases actually have in common against any prejudice consolidation might cause — for example, if combining the cases would confuse a jury, delay a claim that's ready to proceed faster on its own, or unfairly link a strong claim to a much weaker one.

Consolidation doesn't have to mean a full merger; a judge can instead order that the cases simply be tried together, or that one common issue be decided first and apply across both. The parties involved don't have to agree for a judge to order it, though an unopposed request is generally more straightforward. This motion is most useful where the same accident, contract, or transaction has produced multiple separate claims that would otherwise be litigated twice, at real risk of contradictory outcomes.