What is a motion to strike a pleading and when can a judge use it in Ontario?

A motion to strike asks a judge to remove all or part of a claim or defence before the case gets to trial, usually because the pleading is legally deficient rather than because the underlying facts are in dispute. Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure let a party bring this motion where a pleading discloses no reasonable cause of action or defence, is scandalous, frivolous, or vexatious, is an abuse of the court's process, or fails to meet basic pleading requirements such as pleading facts instead of bare conclusions. The judge generally takes the pleaded facts as true for this exercise and asks whether, even so, the claim or defence has no realistic chance of succeeding in law.

If a pleading is struck, the judge often allows the party a chance to amend and refile rather than ending the case outright, unless the defect can't be fixed. Because this motion targets how a claim is framed rather than the evidence behind it, it's most useful early, before both sides invest in discovery. A poorly drafted claim or defence that survives this stage still has to be proven later; surviving a motion to strike is not the same as winning.