Another story from the U.K. today.

The British High Court ordered the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to reveal the information of an editor who made two entries on Wikipedia that would reveal private and confidential information about a woman and her child. The identity of the editor is allegedly a co-worker the woman is in a dispute with.

Justice Michael Tugendhat indicated the woman had good reason to believe she was being blackmailed. . . . [more]

I’ve joked previously that the Google crowdsource traffic feature was a free ambulance chaser application.

A British firm has developed a iPhone application specifically intended to document all the details necessary for future litigation, the iPhone Car Incident Assistant application (iCIA). The Times Online reports:

It appears ambulance chasing has gone digital after Bott & Company, a law firm in Manchester that specialises in personal injury claims, has developed an application for the iPhone that prompts people involved in an accident to record insurance and witness details, take multiple photographs, store GPS information and click through to a

A meditation of sorts, today, on forgetting, re-membering, progress, civilization and all the small stuff like that. But fear not: I won’t be blathering on about these imponderables: I’ll do my best to let you consider them.

The material on which to meditate is a hoard of art work — at least, that’s how we might see it now — produced by what has come to be known as Old Europe. Around seven thousand years ago, in an area about the Danube River, groups of people settled, lived, worked, played and made artefacts for something like a millennium and a . . . [more]

I don’t know how long this has been going on, but some courts are sending judgments to CanLII with hyperlinked tables of contents. Plain old text TOCs are nothing new, of course: long — long, long. . . — judgments pretty much demand them. But courts seem to have discovered that, because they create and submit their judgments to CanLII in MS Word format, it’s fairly easy to construct a hyperlinked table of contents.

A search for [table of contents] turns up recent “hot” TOCs from Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, and Ontario.

This is, of course, . . . [more]

Everybody here over 45, with an OHLS LLB, or who has been out more that 10 years, or has a settled position doing something acceptably remunerative, regardless of how long it’s been since you stopped regurgitating (sorry, graduated), put up your right hand if you can think of one valid reason to bother paying OHLS anything to issue you a piece of paper that has York U on it in bigger letters – oops, sorry, that says you can call yourself a Junior Dick(head) – other than it’s somehow more prestigious because it uses the same questionable Latin that would . . . [more]

A notice to the profession on the Ontario Court of Appeal website reads:

Electronic Delivery of Copies of Reasons for Judgment

On January 1, 2010 the court will modernize its procedure for delivery of copies of its reasons for judgment to counsel and litigants.

Rather than requiring litigants or counsel to attend at the registry office of the court to obtain a paper copy of the decision, the court will send a PDF copy of the signed judgment by e-mail to those counsel and litigants who have provided an e-mail address. Copies will continue to be available for those parties

I’m pleased to share that Lawblogs.ca has added another 18 new Canadian law blogs. Since our update in mid-September, the following websites have been added to the list:

• Canadian Business Law Blog (Shane McLean)
• Disability Denied (Mark Yazdani)
• Les chroniques de droit criminel (Eric Bernier)
• IP, Innovation and Culture (James Gannon)
• B-Law-G (Auger Hollingsworth)
• Blogosarus Lex (Legal Resource Centre of Alberta)
• Fired Without Cause
• Nova Scotia Car Accident Law Blog (David Brannen)
• Heritage Law Blog
• Morton’s Musings
• Aboriginal Law Blog (Davis LLP)
• Rehan Khalil

And for Slaw’s Law Librarian readers, you’ll want to check out the latest addition by Tim . . . [more]

I am greatly afeared that this may be old news to some (though I did search slaw.ca to try to make sure that it has not been mentioned here), but it was news to me. And very cool news indeed. The federal parlimentary website has added XML/RSS tracking for the status of Bills. Want to know when a bill is out of committee, or has been sent to the Senate for a sober second thought? Just go to LEGISInfo, choose your favourite bill (or your least favourite bill). Then click on the tag and let your browser or . . . [more]

The Wall Street Journal reports today:

Thomson Reuters Corp. (TRI) said Thursday it will cut 240 jobs in its legal businesses, with layoffs focused on locations in North America.

The company employs about 13,000 people worldwide in its businesses providing data to legal professionals. That represents about a quarter of Thomson Reuters’ 53,000 global workforce. In 2008, its legal divisions, which include West, FindLaw, Elite, Carswell and its legal publishing unit, represented roughly $3.5 billion in revenue.

The legal business is part of the financial data and news provider’s professional division, which sells information to professionals in health care, science . . . [more]

Almost every day lawyers send me copies of emails they have received that attempt to dupe them into acting on a matter involving a bad cheque or bank draft. Some of these messages are clearly attempts at fraud; others can look very legitimate. We have seen some one in which a lawyer is contacted and asked to refer the matter to another lawyer, presumably to fool the lawyer getting the referral.

Thankfully, most lawyers seem to recognize when they are being targeted. But we are still seeing some lawyers that are getting fooled – including one just this week on . . . [more]

“The Internet is an open door to knowledge, entertainment, communication – and exploitation.”

This quote is in R. v. Legare, 2009 SCC 56, Justice Fish writing for the unanimous majority (at para 1) (emphasis in original).

While I have no wish to write about the facts in this particular matter, it is interesting that a decision about exploitation should be published by the SCC in December.

Unfortunately, the holiday season is often rife with frauds. A grandson in jail scam was recently reported and McAfee has posted an article in their newsroom titled the 12 Scams of Christmas . . . [more]

The New York Times has released a viewer for its newspaper called the Times Skimmer, which displays stories in a simple grid format for use on small screens such as those on smart phones. Readers are able to choose stories from a menu of Times topical sections and categories. Keyboard shortcuts allow readers to thumb their way more efficiently through the news. As well, they can choose from seven different formats. Click on any of the thumbnails below to see an enlarged version of the format.

The Skimmer isn’t the best way to read the Times on an iPhone: . . . [more]