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. Peters v Peel District School Board, 2016 ONSC 4788

[44] I find that Ms. Peters had experience in doing the long jump and would understand the difference between a run-through, a pop up, and a regular jump. It is clear from her testimony and it is clear from the Agreed Statement of Facts. In Windsor in Grade 10 she participated on the track and field team and competed in the long jump, as well as the 100 and 200 metre races. She qualified to participate in the South Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association competition for long jump that same year. She was not a novice in this discipline.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. R. v Soni, 2016 ABCA 231

[39] Findings of dangerous driving are very fact specific. The trial judge recognized that speeding does not itself represent a “marked departure” from normal driving so as to constitute dangerous operation of a motor vehicle. She found, however, that the excessive speed in “the presence of another vehicle which was being driven in an obviously dangerous manner” did demonstrate a marked departure from the standard of driving expected of a reasonable person. The presence of other vehicles, and the way they are being operated, is a legitimate consideration: Roy at para. 36. Measuring how the accused driver reacts to the traffic around him does not amount to imposing a duty to “get away” from other drivers. The criminal culpability of the appellant is not to be measured as if he was driving in a vacuum. No reviewable error has been shown on this issue.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. R. v. Nuttall, 2016 BCSC 1404

[671] When assessing whether the police crossed the line into inducement of the offences committed by the defendants, it is important to view the entire undercover operation in its full context. This was an undercover operation in which the police took two marginalized people, who had done no more than verbally fantasize about engaging in violence for jihadist purposes, and skillfully manipulated them into participating in an act of terrorism that was planned almost entirely by the police and which could not have been executed without overwhelming assistance from the police. This was not a situation in which the police were attempting to disrupt an ongoing criminal enterprise; rather, the offences committed by the defendants were brought about by the police and would not have occurred without their involvement. By any measure, this was a clear case of police-manufactured crime.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Riverin c Conseil des Innus de Pessamit, 2016 CanLII 35702 (QC SAT)

[9] Cette notion de directeur n’étant pas définie dans la loi, l’arbitre doit recourir à la jurisprudence et à la doctrine pour connaître comment et sur quelle base un employé qui occupe un poste de directeur peut être exclu du champ d’application de la Partie III au cas de congédiement injuste au sens de la section XIV.

(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.