Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

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. Bergeron v. Movati Athletic (Group) Inc., 2018 ONSC 885

[12] At the heart of the present case is the interpretation of the termination clause in Ms. Bergeron’s Employment Agreement. The question is whether or not Ms. Bergeron is entitled to be paid in accordance with the termination clause or based on common law reasonable notice.

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2. Lindsay v. Aird & Berlis LLP, 2018 ONSC 7424

[33] The only written warning of the risks associated with proceeding with the defendants’ aggressive tax planning was contained in the Opinion. However, the Opinion was not delivered to the plaintiff until her tax returns relating to that planning had already become the subject of a CRA audit and she had already been accused of participating in a sham transaction. A written warning this late in time is no warning at all. Based on the motion record, I find that the plaintiff was given no written warning of the risks associated with the Plan.

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3. Williams Lake Indian Band v. Canada (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development), 2018 SCC 4

[1] In the early days of British Columbia, there was a rapid influx of settlers following the gold rush up the Fraser River into the interior of the Colony. From 1860 on, some of these settlers displaced the Williams Lake Indian Band from the site of its village and surrounding lands at the foot of Williams Lake. This appeal concerns the failure of the Sovereign of Great Britain and its colonies (“Imperial Crown”) to prevent the band’s Village Lands from being taken up by settlers. It also concerns the failure of the Imperial Crown and the Crown in right of Canada to rectify the situation over the 20 years that followed. At issue is the validity of a claim to compensation under the Specific Claims Tribunal Act, S.C. 2008, c. 22, for losses arising from these events.

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The most-consulted French-language decision was Dunsmuir c. Nouveau-Brunswick, 2008 CSC 9

1. Une fois de plus, la Cour est appelée à se pencher sur l’épineuse question de la démarche qu’il convient d’adopter pour le contrôle judiciaire des décisions des tribunaux administratifs. Au Canada, l’évolution récente du contrôle judiciaire a été marquée par une déférence variable, l’application de critères déroutants et la qualification nouvelle de vieux problèmes, sans qu’une solution n’offre de véritables repères aux parties, à leurs avocats, aux décideurs administratifs ou aux cours de justice saisies de demandes de contrôle judiciaire. Le temps est venu de réévaluer la question.

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* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.