The first question most people ask before suing is not whether they will win. It is whether the fight is worth it. That is the right question, and it deserves a real answer.
Civil litigation in Ontario is a tool, not a reflex. Used well, it recovers money, ends a dispute, or forces a settlement that was never going to happen on its own. Used badly, it costs more than the claim is worth and drags on for years. The difference usually comes down to arithmetic that people do the wrong way, or do not do at all. Before you sue, you should understand what the process actually costs and how the court's own rules shift that math.
The Two Courts, and Why the Threshold Matters
Where your claim goes depends on how much you are seeking. Ontario's Small Claims Court handles claims up to $50,000, a ceiling raised from $35,000 on October 1, 2025. Filing fees are modest, the procedure is stripped down, and you can run the case yourself if you choose. Above $50,000, you are in the Superior Court of Justice, governed by the Rules of Civil Procedure, where pleadings, documentary discovery, examinations for discovery, and motions all add time and cost.
That threshold is the single most important number in the economics of a claim. A $48,000 debt and a $58,000 debt are not just $10,000 apart. They live in different courts with very different cost profiles. For amounts near the line, it is sometimes worth abandoning a slice of the claim to stay in Small Claims Court, where the proportion you keep after costs is often higher.
What You Actually Pay
There are three cost buckets in any civil case. Court fees, which are fixed and public. Disbursements, meaning the out of pocket items a case generates: process servers, court reporters for examinations, expert reports, and the like. And legal fees, which are the largest variable. A straightforward Small Claims trial is a different order of expense than a Superior Court action that runs through discoveries and a multi day trial.
The honest truth is that a fully litigated Superior Court case can cost tens of thousands of dollars to take to trial. That figure frightens people, and it should inform the decision, but it rarely reflects what a case actually costs, because the overwhelming majority of civil claims settle before trial.
"Most civil cases are not won at trial. They are resolved once the other side understands you are prepared to go to trial. The cost of getting to that point is far lower than the cost of finishing it."
Costs Awards: The Loser Often Pays
Ontario, unlike much of the United States, follows a loser pays principle. Under the Rules of Civil Procedure, a successful party is usually entitled to recover a portion of its legal costs from the losing side. In the Superior Court this is often in the range of a little over half of the actual legal fees on a partial indemnity basis, and more where a party behaved unreasonably or beat its own settlement offer. Small Claims Court caps recoverable costs more tightly, generally at 15 percent of the amount claimed, plus disbursements.
This changes the calculation in two directions. If you win, your net recovery is your judgment plus a costs contribution, minus your unrecovered fees. If you lose, you may owe the other side's costs on top of your own. That downside is exactly why a sober assessment of the merits at the outset matters so much.
Mediation Is Not Optional in Toronto
In Toronto, Ottawa, and Essex County, most Superior Court actions must go through mandatory mediation before they can be set down for trial. Many people treat this as a hurdle. It is closer to an opportunity. Mediation is the first moment both sides face the cost and uncertainty of trial at the same time, and it is where a large share of cases resolve. A claim that looks expensive on paper often settles at the mediation table for a fraction of the projected trial cost.
When a Claim Is Worth Pursuing
A civil claim is generally worth pursuing when three things line up. The merits are genuinely strong, not merely felt to be strong. The amount at stake is large enough to justify the cost and the loser pays risk. And the defendant can actually pay, because a judgment against someone with no assets is a moral victory and nothing more. That last point, collectability, is the one people forget, and it is why I raise it before anyone spends a dollar. There is more on that in our article on enforcing a judgment in Ontario.
Sometimes the goal is not money at all. It is ending a dispute, protecting a reputation, or getting an injunction to stop something from continuing. Those are legitimate reasons to litigate, and the cost analysis looks different when the objective is not a dollar figure.
If you are weighing whether to bring or defend a claim, our civil litigation page explains the kinds of disputes I handle, and for the right cases a contingency fee can remove the up front cost entirely. The first conversation is free, and it is often the cheapest way to find out whether litigation is the right tool at all.