The front page of the New York Times for Monday, February 2, 2015 carried a story titled, “Fire at Brooklyn Warehouse Puts Lives’ Detritus on Display.” The article caught my eye for several reasons. A huge, aged warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront that had been used as a site to store paper files belonging to a variety of local and regional governmental agencies that included courts and hospitals, burned in a mighty conflagration. Pieces of paper, bits of records, were blown into the sky by the fire and littered the surrounding neighborhood and shoreline. At first authorities were not overly . . . [more]

Drawing the line between privacy and practicality is not always easy, even for the Justices of the Court of Appeal, who divided narrowly on the issue.

Just before Christmas the Ontario Court of Appeal released a split, 3-2, decision in a case that pitted the privacy rights of judgment debtors against the execution rights of judgment creditors.

The Royal Bank of Canada (“RBC”) had obtained a judgment of just over $26,000 against the defendants. The defendants owned a residential property that RBC wished to have the Sheriff seize and sell so that the bank could collect on its judgment. Since . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

You Can Ignore “Low on Ink” Warnings on Inkjet Printers*
Dan Pinnington

All too frequently, we have all faced the frustrating “printer is low on ink” warning – usually when we are printing something urgent. Do you need to immediately change your cartridge? No. If, despite the low ink warning, you are still getting good quality print jobs (i.e., no fading or streaking), carry on printing….

Research

Understand What . . . [more]

Reading the latest edition of MIRLN, I was reminded again of the Perma.cc service for addressing link rot in journal articles and judicial decisions. I know the issue has been discussed a couple of times on Slaw. I was wondering what Canadian courts are doing to address the problem of link rot. Is there a Canadian equivalent to Perma.cc? Are any Canadian courts using or considering using Perma.cc? Is this a service that could one day be provided by CanLII, or are individual courts’ websites being used for this purpose already? . . . [more]

The UK has just passed a law to criminalize revenge porn (see ss 33 – 35). A fair amount of discussion clearly went into the drafting, considering the qualifications and the language. The law prohibits the publication or distribution of a ‘private sexual photograph or film’ without the consent of the subject and with the intention to cause the subject distress. There are fairly subtle definitions of the images, a broad definition of distribution (online or offline), and a requirement that the intention be specific, not just inferred as a reasonable consequence of publication or distribution.

This article describes the . . . [more]

The demands of individual files can make it a challenge to give your practice’s finances the time and attention they need. From the new issue of LAWPRO Magazine, here are 20 ways you can make or save more money in your day-to-day work. Most are relatively simple and can be implemented at little or no cost. Some are new habits you develop when dealing with clients and billing, and some are new technologies you can incorporate into your practice. While not every item on the list will apply to every practice, we expect you will find at least a . . . [more]

LawWithoutWalls (LWOW) is a collaboratory investigating the “intersection of law, business, technology, and innovation.” Launched in 2011 by Michele DeStefano, associate professor at the University of Miami School of Law, LWOW aims to “pull down barriers between business and law.”

In many ways, LWOW has been a response to comments that DeStefano and her colleagues have been hearing about legal education and the business and practice of law:

“‘When are legal educators going to start training our law school students to be the 21st century lawyers of tomorrow?,’ and then at the

I wrote this post in the middle of January. Some unlucky mishandling resulted in it being published just now. Part of my blog was trying to make good fun of colleagues in the industry who were getting close to releasing a product announced as imminent over a year ago. But their product was finally rolled out… before my post. I will have to remember this the next time I think about mocking colleagues.

What remains true is the cold over Montreal. At least that part of my post remains accurate. The picture attached shows how lucky we are in Quebec. . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Law & Style 2. Blogue du CRL 3. À bon droit 4. David Whelan 5. FamilyLLB

Law & Style
Why Joe Groia is running for bencher

Joe Groia scuttles into the boardroom of his Bay Street law office in a hurry. He’s fifteen minutes late for our 9 a.m. . . . [more]

Human rights violations are always most likely to occur when no one is watching over the police, soldiers and guards who have the power and potential to commit abuses. That is certainly even more the case when secrecy is prevalent; which obviously describes the world of national security investigations and operations. That is why human rights organizations, experts and bodies – national and international – have long stressed that effective review and oversight must be central to the imperative of ensuring that human rights protection is not sacrificed in any country’s rush to uphold national security.

We have had ample, . . . [more]

Film nerds can get all their Oscar-related facts from a series of databases supplied by the Margaret Herrick Library, the research library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Among the library’s many goodies are:

• the Academy Awards Database which contains the record of past Academy Award winners and nominees
• the Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database with more than 1,400 transcripts of onstage acceptance speeches
• the Digital Collections with more than 5000 items, including correspondence, photographs, early release fliers, full issues of rare periodicals, sheet music, lobby cards and movie star ephemera

Enjoy tonight’s Awards show. Go . . . [more]

In the threshold motion in Maxwell v. Luck, previously discussed here, Justice Howell pushed back against what is increasingly becoming a routine attempt by insurers to dismiss chronic pain on the basis of the lack of objective symptoms in personal injury claims.

The cost award, released shortly thereafter, may have significant effects on how insurers in Ontario approach threshold motions in the future.

Justice Howden awarded fixed costs of $150,400, and disbursements of $ 56,332, taking into account that the plaintiff was under a statutory obligation to pursue accident benefits as well. This approach was upheld in Moodie . . . [more]