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. Royal Bank of Canada v. Trang, 2016 SCC 50

[1] This appeal raises the issue of the proper interpretation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5 (“PIPEDA”). The Royal Bank of Canada (“RBC”) is a judgment creditor of Phat Trang and Phuong Trang (“the Trangs”) and seeks a sheriff’s sale of the Trangs’ property, for which the sheriff requires a mortgage discharge statement. RBC has been unable to obtain the statement from the Trangs and thus brought a motion to compel the Bank of Nova Scotia (“Scotiabank”), the Trangs’ mortgagee, to produce the mortgage discharge statement. The Trangs and Scotiabank are not involved in the present appeal, and counsel for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“Privacy Commissioner”) have been appointed amicus curiae.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. R v Adams, 2016 ABQB 648

[48] The Crown argued that inmate behaviours were not under the control of the guards. That is naïve. This is MAX pod, Maximum security. Lock up is 23 hours per day. Of course the guards had control. While there is no evidence the guards allowed these things to occur in the sense that they collectively, or individually, intended such occurrences, it is plain that the guards on duty at the time of the events were not particularly diligent to ensure that the assaults did not occur. That is not surprising given the nature of the accused’s attitude and the problems he caused for the guards. That does not however justify the apparent lack of effort to keep the accused safe. In coming to this conclusion, I do not accept that there were guards who directly or indirectly encouraged other inmates to assault the accused. There is no evidence beyond the accused’s evidence to suggest that the guards in any way acted intentionally in arranging the assaults that Adams suffered at the hands of other inmates. The accused’s evidence on this subject is based upon hearsay and deductions he has made. Frankly, I am not convinced as to the accuracy of his observations. Therefore, the assaults experienced by the accused will be taken in to consideration on sentencing, but they do not amount to action by the authorities that would of themselves justify a stay. The attitude of the Centre staff is, however, part of the context. The question remains, whether the context along with the proved instances of misconduct, taken together, undermine the integrity of the justice system, so as to justify a stay.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Mars Canada Inc. v Bemco Cash & Carry Inc., 2016 ONSC 7201

[7] Buying genuine branded products abroad and selling them in competition with a local distributor of the foreign vendor (and/or its parent company or group of companies) is referred to as grey marketing. There is nothing inherently wrong with grey marketing. Oversimplifying, the basic principle is that if a purchaser buys product legally in a foreign country, the foreign vendor has been paid appropriately for its products and has no further rights to control the re-sale of its goods. Moreover, the sale of the legitimate foreign purchased goods in Canada cannot be claimed to amount to unlawful passing off. Even if the products would appear to consumers to be products sold by the Canadian affiliate of the foreign vendor, since they are legitimate branded products, the Canadian purchaser makes no misrepresentation to consumers as to the source of the goods when it re-sells them here.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Baulne c. Bélanger, 2016 QCCS 5387

[1] La Requérante demande au Tribunal l’autorisation d’exercer une action collective contre les Intimés pour le compte du groupe qu’elle définit comme suit[1] :

« Toutes les personnes qui ont reçu des traitements consistant à effectuer des tractions/étirements lombaires et/ou une décompression neurovertébrale à l’aide de l’appareil Axiom DRX9000 alors qu’ils étaient sous la responsabilité des chiropraticiens exerçant leur profession dans l’une des places d’affaires des Cliniques Zéro Gravité S.E.N.C. et ce, à compter du 5 mai 2010. »

(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.