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 this last week:

1. R. v. Last, 2009 SCC 45, [2009] 3 SCR 146

[1] The Crown enjoys a large discretion in deciding to include more than one count in an indictment (s. 591(1) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46). On an application to sever a multi-count indictment, the overarching criteria are the interests of justice. This appeal raises the issue of whether a trial judge erred in dismissing an application to sever. In my view, he did.

1.1 Overview

[2] The appellant, Gregory Ernest Last, was charged in one indictment with counts related to two incidents involving sexual assaults on two victims and with two counts of breach of undertaking. Prior to trial, he applied for an order that the counts related to each sexual assault be severed and that a separate trial be held with respect to each incident. The trial judge, Killeen J., denied the severance application and proceeded to try all counts together. Mr. Last was convicted on all charges. A dangerous offender application was dismissed and he was sentenced to 22.5 years’ imprisonment. Mr. Last appealed both his convictions and his sentence to the Ontario Court of Appeal but his appeal was dismissed, Juriansz J.A. dissenting 2008 ONCA 593 (CanLII), (2008 ONCA 593, 91 O.R. (3d) 561).

2. R. v. Mian, 2014 SCC 54

[1] The primary question on this appeal centres on the issue of an appellate court’s ability to raise new grounds of appeal and the considerations which should guide the court in doing so. At the heart of this appeal are two potentially competing tensions: (1) the adversarial system, which relies on the parties to frame the issues on appeal, and reserves the role of neutral arbiter for the courts; and (2) the need for an appellate court to intervene in order to prevent an injustice. The question on this appeal is at what point can an appellate court disrupt the adversarial system and raise a ground of appeal of its own?

[2] This appeal arose in the context of a voir dire to exclude evidence. The secondary issue therefore concerns the trial judge’s findings with respect to infringements under s. 10(a) and (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the exclusion of evidence under s. 24(2).

3. Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571

[1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers; Freemen or Freemen-on-the-Land; Sovereign Men or Sovereign Citizens; Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International (CERI); Moorish Law; and other labels – there is no closed list. In the absence of a better moniker, I have collectively labelled them as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants [“OPCA litigants”], to functionally define them collectively for what they literally are. These persons employ a collection of techniques and arguments promoted and sold by ‘gurus’ (as hereafter defined) to disrupt court operations and to attempt to frustrate the legal rights of governments, corporations, and individuals.

[2] Over a decade of reported cases have proven that the individual concepts advanced by OPCA litigants are invalid. What remains is to categorize these schemes and concepts, identify global defects to simplify future response to variations of identified and invalid OPCA themes, and develop court procedures and sanctions for persons who adopt and advance these vexatious litigation strategies.

The most-consulted French-language decision was Renvoi: Droits linguistiques au Manitoba, [1985] 1 RCS 721

1. Le présent renvoi allie des questions juridiques et constitutionnelles des plus subtiles et complexes à des questions politiques très délicates. Les procédures ont été engagées par le décret C.P. 1984‑1136 en date du 5 avril 1984, conformément à l’art. 55 de la Loi sur la Cour suprême, S.R.C. 1970, chap. S‑19. Ce décret dispose:

Vu que le ministre de la Justice estime:

1. Qu’il importe de trancher dans les meilleurs délais possibles divers problèmes juridiques que soulèvent certains droits linguistiques garantis par l’article 23 de la Loi de 1870 sur le Manitoba et par l’article 133 de la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867.

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.