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. Miller v. Carley, 2009 CanLII 39065 (ON SC)

[1] After a busy day conducting illegal drug transactions, the plaintiff, the defendant and a mutual friend stopped at a corner store where the defendant purchased some “scratch” lottery tickets. One of the tickets proved to be a $5-million winner.

[2] The parties dispute ownership of the winning ticket. If the ticket were a child and the parties vying for custody, I would find them both unfit and bring in Family and Children’s Services.

[3] The case is awash in untruths and curiosities. It is a study in good fortune squandered and generosity abused.

2. R. v. Denis, 2014 ONSC 5987

[1] The Crown has brought an application to remove Ms. Calvinho, as solicitor of record for the Accused for the following reasons:

(a) Firstly, the Crown submits that Defence counsel established a solicitor-client relationship with the husband of the Accused, Robert Joachim, by allegedly advising him and his son Raymond Joachim not to give a statement to police in the phone call between them on Friday September 5, 2014;

(b) Secondly, the Crown submits that even if a solicitor-client relationship was not established, there is a realistic risk that a jury could make a negative inference about the Accused, if they became aware of Ms. Calvinho’s conversation with Mr. Robert Joachim. The Crown submits that this is the case even if I find that Ms. Calvinho only told the Accused’s husband he was not obliged to give a statement to the police or anyone else; and

(c) Thirdly, the Crown submits that Ms. Calvinho may be in a position of conflict in her duty of loyalty to the Accused, as she may be tempted not to call Robert Joachim for the defence to avoid raising the issue of her conversation with him.

3. R v Hordyski, 2014 SKCA 102

[7] Mr. Hordyski contends that his trial counsel was incompetent because he for failed to call corroborating evidence to bolster his theory that his relationship with Ms. Peters was dysfunctional and to confirm the extent of his debilitating back injury. That evidence, according to Mr. Hordyski, would prove he did not have the intent to commit the offence.

[8] There is a two-step process involving an allegation of incompetent trial counsel. The first step is to establish that trial counsel’s failure to call corroborating evidence constitutes incompetence and second, that a miscarriage of justice resulted. This test is set out by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v B.(G.D.), 2000 SCC 22 (CanLII), [2000] 1 SCR 520.

The most-consulted French-language decision was Kanavaros c. Artinian, 2014 QCCS 4829

[61] Il n’y a pas dans le présent dossier une réponse scientifique ou judiciaire au fait qu’une personne est atteinte de dommages plus gravement qu’une autre. Le Dr. Côté ignore pourquoi Madame Kanavaros souffre autant d’avoir vu sa réputation être attaquée et bafouée. Consentir à la proposition des défendeurs serait d’accepter qu’ils se sont attaqués à une personne plus fragile qui doit alors seule en porter la conséquence. Un tel énoncé est mal fondé dans les faits.

[62] Ceci étant, il n’y a aucune raison et aucun fait qui militent à l’encontre du droit de Madame Kanavaros d’obtenir une pleine réparation monétaire pour compenser le dommage causé par les défendeurs. De ce qui précède, le Tribunal retient qu’il existe un lien de causalité direct entre le libelle et le trouble de dépression dont souffre Madame Kanavaros.

* 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.