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 the week of April 16 – 23:

1. R. v. Duncan 2013 ONCJ 160
   

   5. At heart, Mr. Duncan’s case was unremarkable. A minor alleged Highway Traffic Act offence led to a police-citizen interaction in the parking lot of Mr. Duncan’s apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. A request that Mr. Duncan produce his licence led to an alleged refusal, which led to an attempt to arrest him, which led to a struggle, which was captured on a very poor quality video taken on a mobile phone, at the end of which Mr. Duncan found himself being placed under arrest for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Nothing unusual in all that. The bread and butter of provincial court.

2. Maclean v. The Barking Frog 2013 HRTO 630
   

   3. This is disputed by the respondent, who states that there was a flat cover charge of $5 for all customers that night. The respondent, however, does not dispute that its doorman may have offered the applicant and his friends a differential price in order to “jump the line”. In my view, this is a distinction without a difference. Whether offered as the regular cover charge or offered only as a special charge to “jump the line”, the dispute here focuses on the charging of a lower price for women in order to enter the bar…

3. Matheson v. Lanark Mutual Insurance Company 2013 ONSC 2441
   

   3. This challenging legal issue is rooted in a decision the Plaintiff, Arthur Matheson, made on October 11^th, 2008, to travel from one part of his farm to another by driving his Honda all-terrain vehicle for approximately thirty seconds, or less, on a public road in the course of his farming operation, in order to check on his flock of sheep, who are pastured on his property.

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.