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As well, the number of judgments issued in the appeal highlighted a split on the broad policy goals behind the statutes that govern securities-based class actions. While there was unanimity on the legal test to be granted leave to proceed with a secondary markets class action, the size of this hurdle was not precisely defi ned. As a result, it is going to be up to the trial courts across the country to provide more guidance as to what "reasonable possibility" of success means when plaintiffs are asking for leave or authorization to go ahead with a securities-based class action against a pub- licly traded company. "The larger issue is what happens with the leave test," says Margaret Waddell, a partner at Paliare Roland Rosenberg Roth- stein LLP in Toronto. "Is it a much more robust test than we previously thought?" asks Waddell, who represented an investors' NO CLEAR PATH It will be up to trial courts across the country to provide more guidance as to what "reasonable possibility" of success means when plaintiffs are asking for leave or authorization to go ahead with a securities-based class action against a publicly traded company. BY SHANNON KARI he Supreme Court of Canada is normally the end of the road for contentious legal issues, regardless of which area of the law is being argued. In its long-awaited deci- sion last December in a trilogy of second- ary markets class action appeals, however, lawyers who acted on the plaintiff side and those on the defendant side of these actions were left wanting when it came to the big picture in this area. The court issued three judgments in the appeals, which were all heard together, in- volving alleged misrepresentations several years earlier by CIBC, IMAX, and Celes- tica. The decisions focused primarily on in- terpretations of confl icting provisions of the Class Proceedings Act and Securities Act in Ontario related to the limitations period — which are effectively no longer in dispute because of amendments enacted in 2014 by the provincial government. T