adamson bbq

Adamson BBQ owner Adam Skelly's court case has been thrown out

The buzzed-about court case through which Adamson BBQ proprietor Adam Skelly vowed to challenge what he perceives to be the tyranny of the provincial government for implementing forced business closures and other lockdown restrictions amid the pandemic has been dismissed.

Those who have been keeping abreast of Skelly's antics — whether in support of him or simply as onlookers to a circus — will know that the restaurateur appeared in Ontario Superior Court via a packed Zoom call on Monday as part of his recently-launched constitutional challenge against the province.

With the backing of more than $300,000 crowdfunded by the anti-lockdown sect who saw Skelly as a hero of sorts for opening his Etobicoke location in contravention of emergency orders in November (and getting arrested and charged for it), Skelly was confident and ready to fight.

After some technical issues due to the hundreds of people in the virtual room, all of the weeks of anticipation led to a tragic anticlimax, with the judge having to toss the case because of some apparent problems with the paperwork submitted by Skelly's counsel, who at one point left the call to retrieve some additional documents, to no avail.

"I regret to say I do not think I have the jurisdiction to proceed to deal with these issues on the merits today... I do not think the proceeding has been constituted in such a way to give me that jurisdiction," the Ontario Superior Court Justice overseeing the case said just minutes into the proceedings, per VICE.

The challenge was originally scheduled to last two days, with Skelly touching on not just business closures, but COVID-19 testing, vaccines, the merits of the World Health Organization, masking, and more topics that the Crown wrote in a response were "superfluous" and "vexatious."

Skelly and his camp collected their thoughts afterwards in a diatribe postd to his blog and Instagram account — which he was only permitted to start using again with restrictions earlier this year —  in which they ask "if a Superior Court justice doesn't have the jurisdiction to hear a constitutional challenge, who does?"

"Our entire legal challenge was dismissed in Superior Court. We have 11 expert reports, none of which were challenged by the government. We have 9 questions of constitutional law, only 2 of which were countered by the government. Yet, not a single thing was heard today. No jurisdiction, said the judge," reads the post to 73.6k Adamson BBQ followers on Monday evening.

"This is the first time a Notice of Constitutional Question served and filed months in advance with a huge evidentiary record was refused to be heard in a Superior Court in Canadian history. The rule of law has been cancelled, once again."

Advisor and coordinator of evidence Chris Weisdorf added that the battle is "far from over" and that the team will be taking the case through the Court of Appeal and "are prepared to take this all the way to the Supreme Court" — so we'll be blessed with more Adamson drama for weeks to come still.

Lead photo by

Hector Vasquez


Latest Videos



Latest Videos


Join the conversation Load comments

Latest in City

Huge TTC parking lot in Toronto about to close forever ahead of redevelopment

Justin Trudeau pledges to save Toronto's Santa Claus Parade

Closure-plagued Toronto streetcar line is finally back in full force

Olivia Chow is going to war with Doug Ford over controversial new bill

Over 55,000 Canada Post workers now on strike and here's how it'll affect you

Here are some Canadian government jobs based in Ontario that pay very well

University of Toronto named among world's best in another category

Toronto plans to install signs blaming Doug Ford for traffic