John R. Wood

Over recent years, rights of way have become a lightning rod for fundamental questions about the Ontario land registration system.

A recent example is MacIssac v. Salo, now going through the Ontario Court of Appeal. The Ontario Bar Association decided that the case was important enough for it to intervene in the appeal.

You may take many things from the case. Most important, perhaps, although the registers are well kept, don't take them at face value. The decision could even be important for property rights in Ontario

You're invited to read the summary of the case . . . [more]

It's December so Christmas, Hannukah and other holidays are right around the corner. For law professors, law students, judges and court staff this is a relief. And the same is certainly true for most lawyers. However, for lawyers that have cases on reserve at the Supreme Court of Canada, the last two weeks of December can be a nerve-wrecking time.

In the last few years, the Supremes have saved some of their biggest cases as a pre-Christmas holiday gifts for all of us SCC-watchers. In 2009, they gave us Grant v Torstar, 2009 SCC 61. The next year, they upped . . . [more]

The Queen’s Bench for Saskatchewan just granted an injunction restraining a former employee from competing against his former employer, soliciting the employer’s clients, and using any of the employer’s confidential information he garnered while working with the employer. . . . [more]

The Vice-Chair of the Labour Relations Board just decided that there was not a continuity between Zellers’ business for its employees to be successively employed by Target in Canada. Although the employees would perform similar jobs at Target stores as they had at Zellers, and the transaction agreement confirmed the transfer of leases, pharmacy records and the brand waiver, these things were not sufficient to conclude that there would be a handover of these employees. As a result, the union’s application was dismissed. . . . [more]

The 19th-annual Disability Awareness Week began on November 12, 2012. Fittingly, on November 9, 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a landmark decision in… . . . [more]

Universities across the country are struggling with how to deal with their students' use of social media. I previously covered the Alberta case of  Pridgen v. University of Calgary, where the court quashed a decision by the university to discipline students who made critical comments on Facebook about a professor. Key to this decision was the university's actions lacked procedural fairness.

Earlier this year the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld this decision, with three separate decisions. Justices McDonald and O’Ferrall indicated that the Charter analysis undertaken by the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta was unnecessary, and upheld the decision . . . [more]

At issue in the second request for reconsideration is the Tribunal’s determination that an ongoing wage differential between disabled and non-disabled employees is not a series of incidents for the purposes of determining the limitation period provided by section 34(1) of the Human Rights Code.
. . . [more]

The Federal Court of Canada ruled on Tuesday October 2, 2012 that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal erred in law when it refused to apply Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act following a hearing into a complaint by Ottawa lawyer and activist Richard Warman. . . . [more]

Virtual delight echoed in tweets, posts, and emails in my corner of the web late Wednesday, upon the release of Judge Baer's opinion in Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust 11 CV 6351 (S.D.N.Y.). Very shortly after its release, Prof. James Grimmelmann posted the opinion on Scribd.

Briefly, for those unfamiliar, the plaintiffs and defendants had each sought summary judgment in respect of the plaintiffs' copyright infringement claim. HathiTrust and related university defendants saw near-entire success in their summary judgment motions, failing only on a standing question not consequential to the result. The outcome: Fair use protects the defendants' participation . . . [more]

This is a guest post by Carissima Mathen, who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.

Having done an initial pass of the Supreme Court decisions issued today, my main sentiment is….admiration (not least, for the unanimous opinion). I think the Supreme Court has done its utmost to consider all sides, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything it said.

First, some background. The Mabior 2012 SCC 47 and DC 2012 SCC 48 appeals presented the Court’s first opportunity since 1998 to consider the difficult issue of how the law should . . . [more]

A recent case from Nova Scotia raises some interesting points around the defence of due diligence in administrative penalty cases for health and safety cases. . . . [more]

A recent Saskatchewan Court of Queen's Bench decided that an injured worker should have his case heard on its merit to determine if his medical marijuana should be paid for by workers’ compensation. . . . [more]