Posted in:
Which Law Is Most in Need of Reform?
That was the topic for the first Times Law Panel’s discussion in January.
What was interesting was the number of times that establishment / bif firm lawyers came out with examples from the civil liberties / criminal law areas.
If one asks the question on Slaw, what would the answer be.
Now that we’re going to have a revived Law Commission at Osgoode Hall Law School, what are the priorities for action?
I don’t know where I’d put it on a priorties list, but the area of law dealing with apportionment of financial responsibility amongst those responsible for loss needs a good airing.
This area includes the issues of apportionnment of fault, proportional and joint liability, contribution problems where one of the wrongdoers is unable to pay that wrongdoer’s share, issues which are corollaries of any decisions that might be made on “loss of chance” and possibilistic causation issues, amending the apportionment statue(s) so that we don’t have parallel regimes under statute and common law because the statute applies to some causes of action but not others, dealing with limitation period issues, and a litany of other problems that I really *DON’T* want to ever write about again.
I don’t mean reinventing the wheel by doing yet another full-study. We have one from the OLRC – the 1988 Report on Contribution Between Wrongdoers and Contributory Negligence that wasn’t acted on. There have been a number of detailed studies since by the law reform commissions of other jurisdictions. An appendix to my article in (2004) 28 Adv Q 137 provides a nice list.
I mean finally getting around to doing something about the law.
How about intellectual property – most specifically, copyright? Particularly in an environment like SLAW.