One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

T.K. v. R.J.H.A., 2015 BCCA 8

Areas of Law: 

Family law; Relocation; Best interests of the child

~A joint custody parent’s reasons for a proposed relocation are relevant to the consideration of whether the move would be in the child’s best interests.~

BACKGROUND: The Appellant, T.K., and the Respondent, R.J.H.A., were married for close to ten years. The marriage broke down when the Appellant insisted the family move . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
Administrative Law – Civil Rights –Criminal Law – Insurance – Evidence

ATCO Gas and Pipelines Ltd. et al. v. Alberta Utilities Commission 2014 ABCA 397
Administrative Law
Summary: These appeals related to decisions made by the Alberta Utilities Commission in two separate proceedings about legal and consulting costs claimed by the appellants (ATCO Utilities). . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

FAILLITE ET INSOLVABILITÉ: Puisque la cession de biens a été orchestrée par l’actionnaire majoritaire dans le but d’éluder certaines obligations financières qu’il avait envers l’actionnaire minoritaire et que l’état d’insolvabilité de la débitrice a été créé de toutes pièces à cette fin, il est dans l’intérêt de la justice d’annuler . . . [more]

In this note, I propose a model of family justice that’s less of a model of family justice than it is a model of family-centred social services, and places primary responsibility for post-separation decision-making on the family itself. Unlike my two previous posts on the subject, Family Justice 3.0 and Family Justice 3.1, this model does propose a fundamental restructuring of how we approach family law disputes. This proposal draws from my thinking on the changes in perception that can flow from conceiving of family law dispute resolution as “family restructuring”, assumes that family wellbeing is a basic . . . [more]

Duncan probably had it right: “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”

It’s where we live — or where we are seen to live — and that’s the point of it, I suppose: communication. All those incredibly numerous and tiny muscles sculpting cheeks and lips, nuancing the skin around the orbits, telling our tales, often whether we like it or no. (The Latin proverb is “Vultus est index animi”: the face is the index of the mind, where “index” means informer or spy.)

This . . . vulnerability may be one of the reasons . . . [more]

A profession is a vocation founded on specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply objective counsel and service to others (1).

Today in North America a person can become a legal professional by graduating from an accredited law school.

What kind of educational training should be offered at a law school?

I submit that law students must become familiar with basic legal concepts by taking courses such as contracts, criminal law, constitutional law, property, torts, statutes, administrative law, evidence, practice, professional conduct, wills and trusts, company law, labour law, legal research, etc.

Legal encyclopedia list over 150 . . . [more]

For some, this decision took a long time to arrive.

The Supreme Court of Canada in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan confirmed once and for all that the right to strike is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This landmark decision strikes down Saskatchewan’s essential services legislation, which prevented a wide range of public sector employees from striking. This decision does not conclude that all essential services legislation that imposes limits on strike action will be unconstitutional; however, it will have an impact on the future of labour relations across Canada. . . . [more]

Social media is a coursing flow of data and information. Twitter’s own output is known as the firehose for obvious reasons. You can tap into that volume to monitor an event or person, making the flow more manageable. To do so, you need to understand what you are looking for and how to avoid missing it.

There are some basic ways to follow a topic on Twitter. The most common is the hashtag – placing a pound sign # in front of a term – and Twitter converts those into a clickable link. Hashtags have a few drawbacks. First, everyone . . . [more]

Did you wear a pink shirt today? Today (February 25) is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, a day devoted to promoting collective action against bullying in our schools, communities and online. The origins of the day, as described by the Globe and Mail, are as follows:

The tradition of wearing pink shirts emerged in September, 2007, after a Nova Scotia high-school student was targeted with homophobic insults for wearing a pink shirt to school. Two Grade 12 students, Travis Price and David Shepherd, organized their schoolmates to wear pink in solidarity.

My favourite #PinkShirtDay tweet was from Manitoba’s Minister . . . [more]

I’ve written about smartwatches before. So far they have not been selling as fast as some expected. The marketplace still hasn’t sorted out the right combinations of features and price.

Apple’s iWatch is arriving in April. It will no doubt sell well – if for no other reason than it’s an Apple product.

The first real smartwatch was the Pebble, which broke Kickstarter records in 2012. They announced a new version of it yesterday, called the “Pebble Time”. They launched a new Kickstarter project yesterday morning – but this time just to take pre-orders at a discount for May . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Iannarella v. Corbett, 2015 ONCA 110

[114] In my view, the improper use of the surveillance evidence gave rise to a form of trial by ambush. This came about because the trial judge did not require the defence to comply with the Rules in relation to the disclosure of the surveillance evidence and the provision of particulars. The trial judge did . . . [more]

How many times have you heard…“Don’t get too excited… You don’t want to be disappointed.” I bet, a lot!

When is it time to get excited about a new case or new project? When the client says they’re moving forward or when they sign the engagement letter or when you receive the check? In my book… all of the above!

The other day I was coaching a client and he shared with me that his client said they would be moving forward on the project. My client said cautiously that he always waits to see the check before he believes . . . [more]