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. Henry v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 24

[2] Mr. Henry brought a civil suit against the City of Vancouver (“City”), the Attorney General of British Columbia (“AGBC”), and the Attorney General of Canada (“AGC”), seeking damages for his wrongful convictions and imprisonment. The claims against the City and the AGC are not at issue in this appeal. We are concerned only with the claim against the AGBC for damages under s. 24(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, Mr. Henry alleges that the provincial Crown should be held liable for its failure — before, during, and after his criminal trial — to meet its disclosure obligations under the Charter. The sole question before us is the level of fault that Mr. Henry must establish to sustain a cause of action against the AGBC in these circumstances.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Ontario Psychological Association v. Mardonet, 2015 ONSC 1286

[35] The common law implied undertaking limits the use that the recipient of compelled disclosure can make of information obtained by that disclosure: Kitchenham v. AXA Insurance Canada, 2008 ONCA 877 (CanLII) at para. 29. The implied undertaking accepts that the privacy interests of litigants must yield to the disclosure obligation within the litigation, but that those interests should be protected in respect of matters other than the litigation: Juman v. Doucette, 2008 SCC 8 (CanLII), [2008] 1 S.C.R. 157 at paras. 23-27. And thus, in the case at bar, the Defendants also have the protection of the implied undertaking, as far as it goes, which is not that far, because the deemed or implied undertaking does not apply to evidence disclosed in open court.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Apotex Inc. v. Eli Lily and Company, 2015 ONCA 305

[55] This is not a bilateral context where Apotex is the only party that has been wronged by Lilly. Effectively, Apotex is asking the court to designate it as the de facto beneficiary of the wrongfully-obtained monopolistic profits despite recognizing in its pleadings that it was the public that suffered actual deprivation as a result of the monopolistic pricing. Unlike the plaintiffs in the “profiting from wrong” cases discussed above, Apotex is not positioned as the sole party with a legitimate right to “enforce” or “deter” the underlying wrong. The pecuniary interests of consumers, and potentially other generic companies, are also implicated. Lilly did not owe Apotex an equitable duty, nor is this case akin to the “exceptional” breach of contract cases where courts award restitution damages to a plaintiff in order to prevent a defendant from exploiting a bilateral agreement to its advantage.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Québec (Procureure générale) c. Magasins Best Buy ltée, 2015 QCCA 747

[29] Rien dans la Charte (ou dans d’autres lois) ne permet d’en venir à une conclusion autre que celle-là, conclusion qui correspond d’ailleurs à l’usage interprétatif que l’Office québécois de la langue française a pratiqué pendant plus de 15 ans. La procureure générale, à ce dernier propos, fait remarquer qu’une interprétation administrative contraire au texte de la loi ne pourrait empêcher que l’on rétablisse le sens véritable de celle-ci. Cela est exact, mais, comme le souligne le professeur Côté dans un passage que cite le juge de première instance[11] : « il faut donc un motif valable pour rejeter un usage interprétatif qui n’est pas contraire au texte »[12]. Or, c’est justement ce qu’on observe ici : la conduite interprétative de l’Office et du gouvernement, en l’espèce, a longtemps été conforme à la loi et ce n’est que récemment qu’elle a changé de cap, changement qui ne reflète pas les textes législatifs et réglementaires.
(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* 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.