Michael Jackson’s sudden death and the skirmishes over who should be his executors, or remain so, should give you pause. You would not want your beneficiaries fighting over your estate and you should want executors with the necessary expertise to manage your assets after you are gone.

Not too much can be done to prevent the former. Jackson’s Will has a “no contest” clause, such that if a beneficiary takes issue with how much he or she is to get, they get nothing. Still, this has not prevented Jackson’s mother from seeking to have herself appointed as an executor or . . . [more]

It is fashionable for class counsel to plead “waiver of tort” as a common issue alleged to be certifiable in product liability class actions. Waiver of tort refers to a plaintiff’s election at a common issues trial to have recovery quantified not by provable tort damages but rather by the defendant’s gain arising from the alleged tortious act.

As merits-based classes defined by injury are impermissible in common law provinces, waiver of tort is the glue to hold together a claim on behalf of all users of a product — without regard to whether it is defective or causes injury. . . . [more]

That’s the lesson from a recent Ontario Superior Court case.

The plaintiff was hired by the defendant on November 28, 2005 for the position of full-time receptionist and was promoted to the position of Executive Assistant in 2008 at an annual salary of $36,000. Her employment was terminated on November 28, 2008 at which time she was presented with a severance package that provided, in part as follows:

You will receive an additional five months pay in lieu of notice of termination as per our obligations under the Employment Standards Act of Ontario.


The Employment Standards Act would have . . . [more]

Our firm guest blogger this month is Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, who have kindly provided us with this firm profile:

At Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG), It Begins With Service.

BLG is a leading, full-service, integrated national law firm focusing on business law, litigation and intellectual property solutions for our clients. With more than 750 lawyers, intellectual property agents and other professionals in Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and Waterloo Region, clients turn to us for assistance with their legal needs, from major litigation to corporate finance and patent registration.

Our goal at BLG is to provide our clients with

I’m very pleased indeed to announce that Dan Michaluk has joined us at Slaw and will be contributing on a regular basis.

Dan is a Toronto lawyer who works at the management-side employment law boutique firm Hicks Morley. Dan is known at Hicks for taking a four-year surfing sojourn after his articles and says he’s given up trying to explain that he actually did do some meaningful work in business and technology in his years away from the practice. Back at Hicks since 2003, Dan now represents management in a wide-range of matters, but does a significant amount of work . . . [more]

Congratulations to Connie Crosby for penning the 6000th comment for Slaw. I haven’t done any real analysis, but if we assume conservatively that each comment consists of only 50 words, that totals to 300,000 words our readers have written. And if a novel comes in at 50,000 words, say, that means you’ve written six novels in four years — not a bad rate at all. Keep up the good work, please. . . . [more]

Slaw will be quieter than usual today: it’s the August civic holiday here in most of Canada, which, as befits our particular federation, goes by various names across the land —

Alberta (Heritage Day)
British Columbia (British Columbia Day)
Manitoba (Civic Holiday)
New Brunswick (New Brunswick Day)
Northwest Territories (Civic Holiday)
Nova Scotia (Natal Day)
Nunavut (Civic Holiday)
Ontario (John Galt Day + Simcoe Day + others)
Prince Edward Island (Natal Day)
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Day)

[source: Wikipedia]

— or is not celebrated at all, as in Newfoundland & Labrador, Quebec, and Yukon. . . . [more]

Wrapping up a week of Guest Blogging from Heenan Blaikie lawyers across the country, we’re going to end by focusing on big changes at Heenan Blaikie’s Toronto offices.

After nineteen years at Royal Bank Plaza, the firm is moving 400 metres up Bay Street to the new Bay Adelaide Centre.

The move presents all sorts of practical and logistical challenges. Soon to join us at Bay Adelaide will be Goodmans and Faskens. They’ll be watching carefully to see how we move the Library. Physically packing and transporting an entire law library is not a trivial undertaking. Here is a . . . [more]

Sometimes new law is very old. According to the OED, the term plagiarism was first applied to music in the Monthly Magazine of 1797, when a composition was described as “the most flagrant plagiarism from Handel” (The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works by Lydia Goehr, OUP). Since then a pantheon of musicians have been accused of lifting melodies – from Jerome Kern (Fred Fisher Inc. v. Dillingham, 298 F. 145, 1924.), George Harrison (My Sweet Lord costs over half a million 1981 dollars to settle: Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)), Mick Jagger (co-author . . . [more]

This week, the entertainment group at Heenan Blaikie has been commenting on various developments in the sector. But I thought it might be fun to ask how media and entertainment lawyers use the new media.

So I asked the group:

What sites are on your bookmarks, that you check daily or that you get email updates from or RSS feeds?

What are the must reads for clients? Does everyone read Variety or Hollywood Reporter? Is there an electronic equivalent?

Do you or your clients use social media? Facebook? MySpace? Linkedin? Legalonramp? Twitter? Follow any blogs? Contribute to any blogs? Or

Courtesy of my friend and partner, Subrata Bhattacharjee, today is the last sitting of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords (you can watch the feed here. So farewell to a court that has provided a vast range of legal judgments from Attwood v. Small in 1838, through Rylands and Fletcher, through M’ALISTER or DONOGHUE (Pauper) v. STEVENSON. In October, a Supreme Court will start sitting to hear appellate matters.

In this Guest Week on Media and Entertainment law at Slaw, it only seems fitting that they’ll spend part of the last day on pop . . . [more]

In today’s financing climate, where pre-sales are more difficult than ever to attract and GAP financing requires two or three times coverage, the holy grail of many independent producers has become “soft money”- funds which are generated by means other than sales of a product, such as tax credits, government subsidies and equity investments. Canadians have become very good at chasing soft money, and that’s why Canadians are tops in co-producing.

In the context of reduced financing sources, it stands to reason that if accessing soft money in one country is good, then accessing soft monies from . . . [more]