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. Zheng v Your New Car Calgary Inc, 2015 ABQB 121

[17] The Plaintiff refers to Bhasin v. Hrynew, 2014 SCC 71 (CanLII), 2014 Carswell Alta 2046 (S.C.C.), Spartek Systems Inc. v. Brown, 2014 Carswell Alta 1496, (Q.B.), and Tirecraft ( supra). Bhasin deals with the duty of good faith in contractual dealings. The latter two cases provide some guidelines as to when the courts may consider it appropriate to lift the corporate veil. Some examples are where the corporation is used as a shield for fraudulent or improper conduct, where the shareholder treats itself and the corporation interchangeably, where the corporation is created to deflect monies from their proper use, and where the company is a sham, cloak or alter ego.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Gauthier v Starr, 2016 ABQB 213

[35] Gauthier’s initial and Amended Statement of Claim arguably could be the product of a poorly informed lay litigant, though taking the step of modifying the Rules Form 10 template Statement of Claim to make this an action where Gauthier is “Prosecutor”, and the Defendants are “Wrongdoers”, is a rather implausible innocent civil litigation error. However, the “Notice” that Gauthier presented in the March 31, 2016 hearing makes very obvious that Gauthier has learned nothing from his previous court interactions and the advice that he should educate himself on Canadian law as it really is, rather than watching “Youtube videos of men scribbling on whiteboards.” (Crossroads-DMD Mortgage Investment Corporation v Gauthier, at para 103).

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Bradford v. Snyder, 2015 ABQB 406

[14] I am prepared to accept that Ms. Snyder’s original estimate of four seconds was in error but, in my opinion, the cyclist was there to be seen in time for a reasonable driver to have stopped prior to the collision. Whether Ms. Snyder took her eyes off the road for two, two and half or three seconds, it was, in my view, too long considering she was in a playground zone and the lighting conditions were poor. Playground zones exist primarily to protect children, but they also indicate that motorists should be on the lookout for increased traffic, particularly of the non-motor vehicle kind.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Association des pompiers professionnels de Québec inc. c. Québec (Ville de), 2013 QCCA 2084

[16] Le juge de première instance exprime l’avis selon lequel la référence par un témoin à une opinion juridique et à sa conclusion ne constitue pas une renonciation au secret professionnel. La seule obligation qui pouvait être imposée à la Ville dans de telles circonstances était de prouver l’existence de cette opinion et sa conclusion, ce qui a été fait par la production caviardée de celle-ci.

(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.