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. 1985 Sawridge Trust v Alberta (Public Trustee), 2017 ABQB 530

[121] I reject that ‘litigating from one’s heart’ is any defence to a potential costs award vs a lawyer, or for that matter from any other sanction potentially faced by a lawyer. Lawyers are not actors, orators, or musicians, whose task is to convey and elicit emotions. They are highly trained technicians within a domain called law. A perceived injustice is no basis to abuse the court, breach one’s oath of office, or your duties as a court officer.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Mclean v Mclean, 2017 SKQB 127

[58] The fundamental problem with the Claim does not arise from inattentive drafting. It is not that a few facts were omitted that resulted in a failure to address each and every element of each cause of action. The problem is that there is no legal redress for the plaintiffs’ real complaint. In addressing causation at the hearing of this application, counsel for the plaintiffs explained the nexus between the RCMP defendants’ conduct and the damages claimed as: had the RCMP officers conducted a proper investigation, Peter would have received a stiffer sentence. The severity of the sentence imposed is not, with respect, the concern of the plaintiffs.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Alberta Energy Regulator v. Grant Thornton Limited, 2017 ABCA 278

[10] This Court has no jurisdiction to suspend the precedential value of Grant Thornton Ltd. v. Alberta Energy Regulator and introduce another legal regime – the one in place before Chief Justice Wittmann released his judgment – for the governance of other bankrupts, receivers and trustees in bankruptcy and secured creditors for a period commencing with the date of pronouncement of any stay order and ending with the date the Supreme Court of Canada either resolves an appeal against this Court’s judgment or dismisses the applicants’ leave-to-appeal application.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Dunsmuir c. Nouveau-Brunswick, 2008 CSC 9

1. Une fois de plus, la Cour est appelée à se pencher sur l’épineuse question de la démarche qu’il convient d’adopter pour le contrôle judiciaire des décisions des tribunaux administratifs. Au Canada, l’évolution récente du contrôle judiciaire a été marquée par une déférence variable, l’application de critères déroutants et la qualification nouvelle de vieux problèmes, sans qu’une solution n’offre de véritables repères aux parties, à leurs avocats, aux décideurs administratifs ou aux cours de justice saisies de demandes de contrôle judiciaire. Le temps est venu de réévaluer la question.

(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.